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By the Same Author, 

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

His Life, Writing's, and Philosophy. 

IVitli Fine Portrait on Steel. $2.00. 

"The religiousness of Emerson and his ethical grandeur 
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" A mere thrend of personal biography runs through the 
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" In all respects an admirable book. The first fourteen 
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George Eliot. 

A Critical Study of her Life, "Writings, 
and Philosophy. 

With Fine Portrait of George Ulliot. $3.00. 

*' An important contribution to the higher class of litera- 
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POETS AND PROBLEMS, 



POETS AND PROBLEMS 



BY 



GEORGE WILLIS COOKE 

AUTHOR OF "RALPH WALDO EMERSON: HIS LIFE, WRITINGS, AND 

philosophy" and " GEORGE ELIOT: A CRITICAL 

STUDY OF HER LIFE, WRITINGS, 

AND philosophy" 



iJ-l 




BOSTON 

TICKNOR AND COMPANY 

1886 




^\n 



^ 

^ 



Copyright, i88b, 
By George Willis Cooke. 



All Rights Reserved. 



Electkotyped by 
C. J. PiiTERS & Son, Boston. 



CONTENTS 



PART PAGE 

I. THE POET AS A TEACHER 17 

II. TEXXYSON" 55 

INTRODUCTION. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VIC- 
TORIAN Poetry 57 

I. Biographical Sketch of Tennyson . 71 

II. Tennyson's Poetic Style 88 

III. Subjective Qualities of Tennyson's 

Poetry 98 

lY. "Maud" 106 

Y. *'IN Memoriam" 112 

YI. "Idyls of the King" 121 

YII. Tennyson as a Lyrical and Idyllic 

Poet 127 

YIII. Tennyson as a Dramatic Poet . . . 138 

IX. Tennyson as a Moralist 144 

X. Tennyson's PvEligious Teachings . . 153 

Conclusion 168 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

III. EUSKIN 171 

Introduction. The Art-Revival in Eng- 
land 173 

I. Biographical Sketch of Ruskin . . 185 

11. Ruskin' s Prose Style 196 

III. Ruskin' s Interpretation of Nature . 201 

IV. Ruskin as a Literary Critic .... 208 
V. Ruskin as an Art Critic 226 

YI. Ruskin as a Political Economist . . 243 

YII. Ruskin as a Religious Teacher . . . 257 

Conclusion 2G6 

IV. BROWNING 269 

Introduction. Idealism in Recent English 

Literature 271 

I. Biographical Sketch of Browning . 279 

11. Browning's Relations to his Wife . 289 

III. Browning's Theory" of Art .... 803 

IV. Characteristics OF Browning's Poetry, 316 
V. Browning's Dramatic Poetry .... 829 

-VI. Browning as a Thinker 345 

J VII. Browning's Religious Teachings . . 355 

Conclusion 885 



PEEFACB, 



I HAVE not sought to play the critic in the 
following pages. I have not the skill or the 
inclination for such a task ; and I cannot feel it 
would be worth the while, if I had. For the power 
of the creative artist in prose or poetry I have 
a reverence which would forbid my sitting in 
judgment on his work. By his own capacities 
and his own methods he must stand or fall. If 
he is faithful to them, the critic can ask of him 
nothing more. His methods may be judged ; but, 
in so far as the poet is true to his own personal 
genius, he should have only our love and admira- 
tion. 

I do not write as a professional critic, for I 
have little other than feelings of contempt for 
that profession and the methods by which it 

9 



10 PEEFACE. 

contrives to live. It is easy to find faults in the 
best of authors, and to pick flaws in the works of 
the masters of literature. But of wholesome and 
pure-hearted admiration the world never has too 
much ; and, sad to say, in literature enthusiasm is 
seen too seldom. For my part, I enjoy praising, 
and the giving to him who is worthy my enthu- 
siastic admiration. That I thus unfit myself for 
the critic's task I am well aware ; but I will 
forego the critic for the sake of the delightful 
luxury of praising. 

I have written of Tennyson, Ruskin, and 
Browning for no other reason than that I have 
greatly enjoyed reading their books. I have 
found them true companions and guides, and 
the best of friends. I have written of them in 
a sympathetic spirit, and with a desire to find 
that in them which is most worthy and most 
characteristic of their genius. In each I have 
found some pregnant truth and some luminous 
interpretation of life. By the highest expression 
and capacity of each I have sought to recognize 
him, and to give him the just meed of reverence. 
In loving any one of them I have not found my 



PREFACE. 11 

admiration for the others to grow less, for each 
gives me something I do not find elsewhere. I 
enjoy the pages of Browning at the same time 
that I enjoy those of Tennyson ; bnt not from the 
same causes. I can turn from the one to the 
other without disappointment or regret, because 
seeking to meet them on their own ground, and 
to give them the sympathetic appreciation they 
demand. I am of the opinion that this is the 
first and highest quality in the critic ; and if he 
does not possess it he is wholly unworthy the 
name. Nothing else can take the place of it or 
make anybody capable of rightly judging the 
work of a great author. To impregnate one's 
mind with the poet's thought and emotion, and to 
surround one's self with his atmosphere, is abso- 
lutely necessary to any right conception or appre- 
ciation of his work. If that is not done, all talk 
about him is wasted words and the announcement 
of superficial faults. 

The critic is too often the man of a cold and 
analytic mind, incapable of sympathy and enthu- 
siasm. He holds his author at arm's length, and 
scrutinizes him as he would a fossil. The result 



12 PREFACE. 

is about as appreciative and profitable ; and it is a 
mere waste of effort. If I have failed because of 
not adopting this method, I am content to have it 
so ; for I would not succeed, through being unable 
to love the authors of whom I wTite. Enthu- 
siasm for one's subject is necessary to all good 
writing ; and he who is enamored of any subject 
soon finds others to appreciate it with him. 

My purpose in the first of the following essays 
has been to point out the true nature of the 
poet's art. There is a growing tendency at the 
present time to adopt a merely external and 
superficial interpretation of poetry, and to see in 
it nothing more than a jingling together of words. 
Against that conception of it, which is working 
the most evil results with our younger poets, I 
have Avished to enter my protest. I do not 
suppose that any word of mine will be heard far ; 
but I may helj) a few readers to find what is best 
in the poetry of the present time. He who is not 
a poet himself must be content to accept that 
which comes from others. If it is a true expres- 
sion of genius, he has no cause to complain 
should it not answer to his own theories. When 



PREFACE. 13 

certain current tendencies mislead younger men, 
however, he cannot feel quite at ease; for he 
would see every man in whom there is promise 
doing the best of which he is capable. That 
which cripples and betrays the poet is a cause 
for serious alarm and for indignant protest. 

I am not foolish enough to suppose that I can 
stem the drift of opinion on this or any other 
subject. One might as well try to sweep back 
the ocean with a broom as to try to resist the 
stronger tendencies of thought in any age. They 
must run their course, and make prominent the 
truths they represent ; and then give way to the 
fresher currents of the newer time ; but there 
may be a singer here or there who has not found 
himself in sympathy with the drift of the time, 
and who may be led into harmony with those 
deeper and wiser tendencies which have in them 
life and power. 

Having described the true compass and quality 
of the poetic art, I turn for illustration to three of 
the greatest living writers. The remarkable con- 
trast in the genius and the methods of Tennyson 
and Browning make them admirably adapted to 



14 PREFACE. 

my purpose. Not the less does the wonderful 
prose of Ruskin illustrate its capacity for becom- 
ing in every way essentially poetic. Not wishing 
to appear merely as the champion of a literary 
theory, I have sought to interpret these authors 
from a much broader point of view, as well as 
from this special one, and to indicate their 
relations to the problems of the time. This, I 
take it, is a true and a legitimate work for the 
hand of the critic, and one of very great impor- 
tance. My purpose has been, in this direction, to 
interpret the thought and spirit of the Victorian 
era in England, as they appear in the writings of 
these representative authors. The literature of 
any period is but a reflection of its life ; and 
when we would fully understand any age we 
must turn to the men who have uttered its 
highest aspiration and given direction to its 
sentiments. 

My essays will everywhere betray my inca- 
pacity for finding the faults of the authors of 
whom I have written. If any of my readers 
should persist in regarding me as a critic, I am 
afraid he will turn from my -pages with disap- 



PREFACE. 15 

pointment and disgust. I prefer being told that 
I have no opinions of my own to tearing to pieces 
the work of other men. The critics have too 
long acted as the vultures of literature, rending 
and devouring, and seeking only to satisfy their 
hunger by the task of their pens. A better 
criticism has arisen in these later years, the spirit 
of which is constructive and inspiring. For the 
critic of a broad and generous insight there is 
ever a need, and lie can do the literature of any 
time a great service. 

At present the greatest need of American 
literature is for a true criticism. We have 
nothing that is worthy of the name, though here 
and there are men whose work is of the best. 
We have turned away in disgust from the critic 
as a faultfinder, but we have not yet learned to 
cultivate the more philosophical and comprehen- 
sive spirit which may animate his work. A 
criticism of this higher kind would do much 
to elevate and develop the literature of the 
Republic. I have written in sympathy with such 
a criticism, even if I have not attempted to give 
it fitting expression. My effort has been less 



16 PKEFACE. 

ambitious, and can claim no attention except as 
the work of an amateur. As a lover of books 
have I written, and as one who finds his highest 
intellectual enjoyment in the company of the 
great masters of literature. I do not know that 
my book has any other merit than that which 
comes of this love. 

Dedham, Mass. 



1, 

THE POET AS A TEACHER. 



All good poets, epic, as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems, 
not as works of art, but because tbey are inspired or possessed. — Plato. 

A MUSICAL tbougbt is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into 
the inmost heart of the thing ; detected the inmost mystery of it, named 
the melody that lies hidden in it, the inward harmony of coherence 
which is its soul, whereby it exists and has a right to be here in the 
Vfovld. — Carljjle. 

Wherewith bestirs he human spirits ? 
Wherewith makes he the elements obey? 
Is't not the stream of song that out his bosom springs, 
And to his heart tlie world back circling brings? 

— Goethe. 

Poetry interprets in two ways : it interprets by expressing with magi- 
cal felicity the physiognomy and movement of the outward world, and it 
interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of 
the inward Avorld of man's moral and spiritual iiature. In other words, 
poetry is interpretative by having natural magic in it, and by having 
moral profundity. In both ways it illuminates man ; it gives him a satis- 
fying sense of reality ; it reconciles him with himself and the Universe. 
The greatest poets unite in themselves the facidty of both kinds of inter- 
pretation, the naturalistic and tlie moral. But it is observable that in 
the poets wlio unite both kinds, the laiter (the moral) usually ends by 
making itself the master, — Matthew Arnold. 

He is the healthy, the wise, the fundamental, the manly man, seer of 
the secret ; against all appearances he sees and refwrts the truth. — 
Emerson. 



I. 

THE POET AS A TEACHER. 

Gkeatest of the forms of art, poetry retains 
its influence over the mind and heart of man 
through all changes of philosophy and religion. 
He is ever ready to confess its magic charm and 
to own its subtle power. Whether savage, sage, 
or saint, it commands his aspirations and bears 
sway over his feelings. Its rhyme and rhythm, 
its music and flow of words, draw him to its beau- 
ties as an art; but its sentiment and ideal thought 
lay hold of him with the keenest joy and the deep- 
est satisfaction. 

In every man is something of " the vision and 
the faculty divine." All men see beneath the sur- 
face of things, are transformed by feeling, have the 
sense of beauty, and are awakened to a higher 
life by visions of what has not yet been made 
actual in conduct. Few have the gift of expres- 

19 



20 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

sion, or the touch and renewing power of the 
artist ; but all have their moments of ideal desire 
and poetic impulse. To a few are given the fac- 
ulty of poetic utterance, and the power of making 
words beautiful with passion and imagination. 
These say what others only feel; and they 
become the interpreters of the world's inward 
impulses and ideals. 

The poet is loved of mankind because he 
reveals the thoughts of many hearts, because he 
says in words of living force and beauty what all 
experience. He is the world's sayer and singer, 
finding forms of adequate utterance for the pas- 
sion that burns within the heart of man, and sing- 
ing the heart's emotions in words of melody and 
power. While feeling is awakened in man by the 
experiences of life and death, the passionate 
ardors of love and the dark destinies of hate, 
poetry will continue to attract men and to answer 
to a need of their natures. While men love they 
will delight in the poet's art. As the world 
advances it may bring us a Homer never again, 
with his naive and primitive look at the fortunes 
and destinies of men; but feeling itself has known 
no decay or corruption since Homer sang, and it 
burns within men with the same mighty passion 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 21 

as in the time of Helen. It has grown purer, 
sweeter, and nobler with the lapse of ages, less 
sanguine and volcanic, more humane and gentle ; 
but not less ardent and imperative. While love 
remains, while death awaits, while pain and sor- 
row beset, while aspiration soars, feeling will be 
to the poet an inspiration and a perennial cause of 
song. It will fill and satisfy his heart ; it will 
cause imagination to bring forth ever fresh crea- 
tions from the boundless treasure of its spirit; it 
will smite him with a passion for moral insight 
and greatness, and it will unite him in the bonds 
of deathless love to the men his brothers for 
whom he sings. 

The poet does not speak what he will, but what 
he must ; he is the voice of immeasurable powers 
which lie behind him calling for utterance. He 
becomes the medium of their expression, the 
spokesman who comes forth to deliver their 
thought. There is more in what he says than he 
knows ; deep things he has not divined, rules of 
life he has not comprehended, echoes of an 
immeasurable life he has not realized in its ful- 
ness. If he understands all which he sayg, in all 
its meanings and relations, as reason may take 
note of them, then he is no poet. There is more 



22 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

in man than reason defines, more in his experience 
than the understanding can describe; and there- 
fore it is the poet finds a place for his song and 
a demand for his singing. The larger any truth 
which comes near to man's life, the less clearly 
can it be defined, the less is it possible for any 
words to tell us what it really means and is. A.ffec- 
tions, and the soul's vision, bear meaning to us in 
relation to our own experience and capacity. The 
same words give much to one, little to another. 
It is not so in geometry ; it is not so in physi- 
ology. In these regions of scientific fact there is 
but one voice to be uttered, and every person gets 
from the facts the same meaning. The smaller 
the value, the greater the accuracy. The dead 
rock can be perfectly described ; but the mother's 
love is not to be brought within the limits of the 
finest poem or the most exquisite picture. There 
is always that which is beyond the limits of 
description, beyond the methods of reason. Into 
this region of the largest of all thoughts, the 
noblest of all experiences, the region of life and 
its soul-realities, comes the poet. What he has 
lived he pours forth in his song, telling men what 
he has seen and what he is. Nothing beyond 
that can he ever sing with power to toucli other 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 23 

men. If lie has loved, then love will be in his 
song. If he has seen God as one of the pure in 
heart may see him, then earth and heaven cannot 
keep that out of his poem. The moment he 
stands before us in his singing, with the true 
light of song kindling his face, that moment we 
shall know what manner of man he is ; that hour 
is his heart confessed. So it is the poet helps u^j^^"'^^ 
to know what we cannot define, to touch the 
experiences of others with a sense of reality. He 
does not define the love surpassing the love of 
women, but his words become so transfused with 
that love as to kindle the like of it in ourselves. 

That which is expressed in poetic form is not 
any the less true, but all the more true, because 
too large for any logical statement. Astronomy 
is the only purely exact science, conformable to 
the mathematical test ; and it deals with matter 
only in relations of quantity and position. Next 
to this is Physics, into which more complex forces 
and relations enter ; but in which exactness is less 
often to be obtained. Chemistry presents a field 
of still more subtle and intangible forces ; pre- 
cision and certainty are so much the farther 
removed. The higher the science and its mate- 
rials, the greater its importance, the more complex 



24 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

its relations^ and the more of life there enters 
into it, by so much the more are the conclu- 
sions obtained wanting in precision. The exact 
sciences deal only with dead matter. The more 
life and perfection and beauty, the less we know 
or can know by the means of absolute state- 
ment. The man of science can tell us all we 
wish to know about a dead moon or a piece of 
granite rock, but about a flower that grows by 
the wayside he must have the aid of the poet 
before he can discover all that it is to man. 

Common sense can speak the facts of ordinary 
affairs. Reason can unriddle the problems of the 
understanding, and tell us the plain prose of life. 
The great things of existence, those nearest to 
our hearts and imaginations, the problems of 
being and pure living, are never measured by 
science. These are so great we get only some 
hint about them here and there, some glimpse of 
their larger and subtler meanings, some flash of 
light for a moment. We must turn to phi- 
losophy, religion, poetry, and art for an answer 
to all the deepest questions life suggests to us ; 
and then we shall find no perfect answers, no 
entirely satisfactory explanations. The greater 
and more important a thing is, the less can we 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 25 

know about it with the aid of science ; we must 
let feeling and imagination flow in upon it when 
we would get the highest results; and this pro- 
duces poetry. 

In some directions poetry offers us the best and 
surest knowledge we can have. We should have 
no difficulty in believing this did we not con- 
stantly forget the manifold nature of man's 
powers and ignore some of the noblest faculties 
of his mind. Man is not merely a being endowed 
with reason and a conscience ; he has also affec- 
tions, emotions, and imagination. To know the 
whole truth, imagination is as essential as reason. 
Life cannot be judged correctly unless the emo- 
tions offer their testimony. Poetry is as real as 
science. It is the result of applying emotion and 
imagination to the facts of nature and life. It is 
the product of feeling in responsive attitude to- 
wards beauty, or it is the imaginative glow and 
thrill which all deep and true things produce in 
us. Coleridge defines it as " the blossom and fra- 
grancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, 
human passions, emotions, language." Matthew 
Arnold truly says that poetry does not consist in 
" the power of drawing out in black and white an 
explanation of the mystery of the universe, but 



26 POETS AKD PEOBLEMS. 

the power of so dealing with things as to awaken 
in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense 
of them, and of our relations to them ; when this 
sense is awakened in us as to objects without us, 
we feel ourselves to be in contact with the essen- 
tial nature of those objects, to be no longer bewil- 
dered and oppressed by them, but to have their 
secret, and to be in harmony with them ; and this 
feeling calms and satisfies us as no other can." 
This is the power of poetry, that it satisfies us, 
that it fills the heart, that it lifts the whole indi- 
vidual being up into a responsive attitude towards 
nature, man, and God. 

Wordsworth clearly saw that, while science 
gives us truth, poetry gives us what is even more 
important. It clothes the skeleton of nature with 
life and beauty. It is the life and essential na- 
ture of whatever we see and know. It is the fra- 
grant bloom of the universe, that gives promise of 
a new life springing up in it. It is the higher 
spirit of science ; and thus Wordsworth defined it, 
in words which are full of truth and beauty alike : 
" The knowledge both of the poet and the man of 
science is pleasure ; but the knowledge of the one 
cleaves to us as a necessary part of existence, our 
natural and inalienable inheritance ; the other is 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 27 

a personal and individual acquisition, slow to 
come to us, and by no habitual and direct sym- 
pathy connecting us with our fellow-beings. 
The man of science seeks truth as a remote and 
unknown benefactor ; he cherishes and loves it in 
his solitude : the poet, singing a song in which all 
human beings join with him, rejoices in the pres- 
ence of truth as our visible friend and hourly 
companion." 

To know is not enough for man. We may 
know all about the stars; but that knowledge 
does not take the place of the awe and wonder 
and sense of mystery which the nightly heavens 
give us when we look up to them with the eyes 
of the poet. We may know all the bones in a 
baby's body, have all its physiology at our 
tongue's end ; but that does in no way replace 
a mother's delight in it or that knowledge of the 
babe which comes out of her affection. This halo 
which the higher nature in man casts about all 
things, with the aid of emotion and imagination, 
is as real as the stars ; and without it life would 
be shorn of its glory and nature of its beauty. It 
is in this inner region of human experience that 
poetry finds its place and justification. While 
there is beauty or deep feelings or sublime 



28 POETS AND FEOBLEMS. 

thoughts or mighty deeds, poetry will continue 
to charm the mind of man and weave about him 
the magic influence of its spirit. 

The poet shows us things in their living 
relations and harmony. He shows us life as it is; 
presents us with the living beauty and gives us a 
consummated impression and effect. The man of 
science must destroy before he can know ; he cuts 
to pieces what he cannot bring to life. Science 
and its methods 

— lay life's house bare to its inmost room 
With lens and scalpel. 

This is necessary, and must not be complained of; 
the results thus obtained are important even to 
the poet, and vastly helpful in all the daily affairs 
of life. Science is not to be scorned for the sake 
of poetry, or its methods and their value belittled. 
It is enough to say, in behalf of poetry, that 
science does not give us all we wish to know, 
does not present all the effects which can be 
obtained from life and nature, and does not solve 
the mystery of existence. In his " Each and All," 
Emerson announces a truth which justifies the 
larger look at things which is the poet's. Nature 
is beautiful as a whole, in its own relations and 
orderings. The caged bird loses its charm, be- 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 29 

cause the wood, the sky, and all nature are taken 
away from about it; and it is no longer a part of 
that wide-reaching impression which makes the 
variety, delight, and beauty of nature. 

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 
Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; 
I brought him home, in his nest, at even ; 
He sings the song, but it cheers not now, 
For I did not bring home the river and sky ; — 
He sang to my ear — tliey sang to my eye. 

The thrill of joy, the glow of poetic emotion, 
the sense of all-pervading life and mystery, which 
we have often felt when we looked on a beautiful 
landscape the poet has well described : — 

Beneath my feet 
The groimd-pine curled its pretty wreath. 
Running over the club-moss burrs ; 
I inhaled the violet's breath; 
Around me stood the oaks and firs ; 
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground ; 
Over me soared the eternal sky, 
Full of light and of Deity ; 
Again I saw, again I heard, 
The rolling river, the morning bird ; — 
Beauty through my senses stole ; 
I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 

In one of the most impressive passages in all 
his writings, Wordsworth has also described the 
effect which may be produced upon the poet by 



30 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

nature, in intimate communion with her. He 

describes a youth, when, standing on 

the naked top 
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun 
Else up, and bathe the world in light! He looked — 
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, 
And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay 
Beneath him; — far and wide the clouds were touched, 
And in their silent faces could be read 
Unutterable love. Sound needed none. 
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank 
The spectacle ; sensation, soul, and form 
All melted into him: they swallowed up 
His animal being; in them did he live. 
And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
In such access of mind, in such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God, 
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. 
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request; 
Rapt into still communion that transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power 
That made him ; it was blessedness and love. 

This response of man's nature to the beautiful 
is one of the most remarkable features of his life 
and mind. The poetical disposition grows out of 
this sense of beauty, and from the glow and 
fervor it gives to the whole being. It comes, too, 
from a sense of our harmonious relations to a 
harmonious universe, from a feeling that man and 
nature respond t:o and rightly interpret each 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 31 

other; and that they harmoniously blend, as do 
two notes of music. Nor is this effect limited to 
man's relations to nature; it is produced by all 
man's experience in which feeling, beauty, and 
imagination have a part. 

Poetry enters into those higher regions of 
human experience concerning which no definite 
account can be given ; where all words fail ; about 
which all we know is to be obtained by hints, 
symbols, poetic figures, and imagings. Poetry is 
truer and more helpful than prose, because it 
penetrates those regions of feeling, beauty, and 
spiritual reality, where definitions have no place 
or justification. There would be no poetry 
if life were limited to what we can understand ; 
nor would there be any religion. Indeed, the 
joy, the beauty, and the promise of life would all 
be gone if there were nothing which reaches 
bej^ond our powers of definition. The mystery 
of existence makes the grandeur and worth of 
man's nature, as it makes for him his poetry and 
his religion. Poetry suggests, hints, images forth, 
what is too wonderful, too transcendent, too near 
primal reality, too full of life, beauty, and joy, 
for explanation or comprehension. It embodies 
man's longing after the Eternal One, expresses 



32 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

his sense of the deep mystery of Being, voices his 
soul-sorrow, illumines his path with hope and 
objects of beauty. Man's aspiration, his sense of 
imperfection, his yearning for a sustaining truth 
and reality as the life within and over all things, 
find expression in poetry; because it offers the 
fittest medium of interpretation for these higher 
movements of soul. Whenever the soul feels 
deeply, or is stirred by a great thought, the poetic 
form of utterance at once becomes the most 
natural and desirable for its loving and faithful 
interpretation. 

Man has within him a need for the food which 
does not perish ; he always is finding anew that he 
cannot live by bread alone. His mind will crave 
truth, his heart love, somewhat to satisfy the in- 
ward needs of life. A heavenly homesickness will 
draw him away from the material to those aesthe- 
tic and spiritual realities which are at the source 
of the truest poetry. Whenever these wants find 
fit interpretation, the poet and the poetic method 
of expression appear and give to them outward 
forms of beauty. Consequently the poet is 

One in whom persuasion and belief 
Have ripened into faith, and faith become 
A passionate intuition. 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 33 

He is roused and inspired by the world in which 
he lives ; it carries him away with its beauty and 
its reality, and he pours forth the impressions 
which it makes upon him with a sense of creative 
delight. The semi-unconsciousness and the ecstasy 
with which his mind is wrapped, testify to the 
glow and the ardor and the rapture in which his 
work is done. Then " he thinks God's thoughts 
after him," in a fresh access of creative power ; 
and he, too, becomes the maker of worlds and the 
creator of new beings. 

The man of science regards the universe as a 
problem to be solved ; the poet discovers it to be 
the endless forth-putting of a beautiful and boun- 
tiful life. For him it is a wonderful epic of life 
and death to be read ; a great picture to be gazed 
at with longing and soul-imbibing eyes, or a song 
whose passion and rapture fill his heart with 
quenchless joy. He would infuse himself with its 
spirit, and lift himself to the level of its beauty. 
It is to him a work of art that satisfies him for the 
moment, but into which a higher life and a more 
consummate spirit are ever being poured. The 
song of a deathless singer, it unfolds new heights 
and depths, new ardors of passion, fresh pathos 
and hope, and a widening glory and range of 



34 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

power, as the harmony ]3roceeds and the singer 
gives himself more and more to the purpose of 
malving his singing an image of his own being. 
To touch the harp with some echoes of the Mas- 
ter's unfading music is the aim and joy of the 
poet. Ever within him is heard, in dreams and 
waking hours alike, that perfect music of the 
Abounding Life, that quenchless song of the stars 
as they spin, of flowers as they bloom, of women 
as they love, and of men as they aspire; and it 
incarnates itself in him until he becomes an seolian 
harp to repeat it for the sustainment of human 
hearts. 

As one note of music accords with and com- 
pletes another, the poet takes the universe into 
himself and repeats it with a finer harmony and 
as a note of richer music. He does not look at it 
from without; but he is one with it, and thrills 
with its every rapture. Because he loves it, and 
opens his heart to its every whisper of confidence, 
it tells him its inmost secrets, and adopts him as 
its own. 

The poet is the child of nature, as he is the 
child of humanity. He is the creature of the 
deepest affection of these wedded ones, and cher- 
ished of them both with a love the most tender 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 35 

and sympathetic. He has played about the 
knees of humanity, and he has romped with 
nature over hill and dale. The love of the one 
and the beauty of the other come to him as his 
own, and are the fruitful inspiration of his song. 
As they combine and harmonize in his nature, a 
life more ample, and with a new glory of being, 
goes forth to meet the morn of a new day. Thus 
gifted with the largess of spiritual vision, the poet 
becomes the world's prophet and inspirer. The 
glory of stars as they first flash into the field of 
human vision, and of Edens that beckon to men 
out of the far-off inviting future, reflect them- 
selves in his face, and kindle there a new light to 
lead men upward. He invites men to new coun- 
tries of the ideal and to untrodden worlds of 
spiritual reality. He awakens in them a thirst 
for the fountains of life and beauty, and he gives 
them a longing to go forth to that country 
beyond the borders of material fact, and to 
partake of its satisfying waters. He makes men 
pilgrims; he makes them searchers. Under his 
inspiration the present ceases to satisfy; they 
behold the more perfect, and will not be content 
until tliey have possessed it. 

True poetry consists not in a form of expres- 



36 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

sion, but in the higher spirit which it contains. 
There is more true poetry in one of the prose 
chapters of Ruskin than in many a volume of 
newly turned verse. Beauty and symmetry of 
language, involving rhyme and rhythm, increase 
and intensify beauty of thought and sentiment; 
but in themselves rhyme and metre cannot make 
poetry. There must be an inward beauty, an in- 
forming spirit of creative power, or the poetry is 
wanting. It is beauty, feeling and imagination 
alone which make poetry; and if these are ab- 
sent it is the baldest prose which results, what- 
ever the form given to the language. 

The true antithesis, as Coleridge suggests, is 
not between poetry and prose, but between poetr}^ 
and science. Science analyzes ; poetry creates. 
Science seeks for facts; poetry for life. The 
poet penetrates to the heart of the world through 
sympathy. He reads it as a lover ; his heart goes 
forth to it as to its own. He is one that draws 
into his soul all that the world and life can re- 
veal, and who presses beyond them towards the 
goal of being, where all that is hidden is to be 
made known. He knows the heart of his be- 
loved, because his heart is one with hers. Over 
and above what the student of human nature can 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 37 

tell him about her he knows her as a being of 
affection and spiritual apprehension, whose nature 
has been brought into living and loving sym- 
pathy with his own. Life has revealed herself to 
the poet as one beloved with an affection the 
deepest and truest. 

Poetry is a process of creation, and the poet is 
a maker. Law reigns in what he makes, but life 
reigDS even more. It is to be measured by its 
vitality, by the depth and superbness and whole- 
ness of the life it manifests, and not by its fine 
ordering of syllable and sound. The greater the 
poet the more he makes form yield itself subservi- 
ent to the richness of his imagination and the 
deep ardors of his passion. The world-poets 
make the technique of their art a plastic instru- 
ment in their hands, yielding not to it as to some- 
thing which controls them, but working with it, 
as if it had become a part of their own natures. 
In our own day we see Browning holding himself 
aloof from the rigid requirements of the poetic 
art, sporting with rhyme and metre, and refusing 
to 3'ield himself to the enchantments of this fair 
Delilah. He is conscious that poetry has a higher 
purpose and power than lie embosomed in these 
things of outward form. He rejects and scorns 



38 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the beauty which has no other meaning than color 
and decoration in dress. 

Browning's independence of the mere tech- 
nique of poetry is to be admired, for we have had 
quite too much of slavish conformity to outward 
rules. Poetic independence is to be desired, free- 
dom of utterance, the greatness and originality 
which rise in lofty courage of spirit above the 
rules which have been laid down by the mere 
ingenuity of men. The more rules the worse for 
art ; and the more closely they are followed the 
less life and genius are the result. The ages 
when rules are most loved and studied are the 
ages when stiffness and rigidity predominate, 
when originality and independence least assert 
themselves. The creative spirit makes its own 
rules or comes close to those of nature herself. 
Not, however, that lawlessness is to be the rule in 
art ; nothing of the kind, but that the creative 
faculties make rules which cannot be defined to 
the intellect. They see instinctively what is 
best, and are inclined, when free, to do what is 
most truly in accordance with nature and life. 

This independence is characteristic of our cen- 
tury. Tlie age of Burns and Wordsworth would 
not longer follow the rules which guided the age 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 39 

of Dryden and Pope ; it broke away from them, 
and came back to simpler forms and means of ex- 
pression. That spirit has continued down to the 
present time, and asserts itself in many an ignor- 
ing of the methods of the schools. It is to be 
seen in the lawlessness of such men as Whitman, 
who throw aside all form ; in the disregard of 
rules and rhyme by such lovers of feeling as 
Mrs. Browning ; in the rugged utterance of 
forcible thought on the part of men like Brown- 
ing, and even in the perfect music and melody of 
such men as Tennyson and Swinburne. These 
last have shown the same tendency as the others, 
in that they have widened the range of the old 
forms, no longer being content with the tradi- 
tional laws of poetry. They will comply with 
rules only as the rules are the expression of living 
impulses of poetic desire, and as they assist the 
mind on the way to harmony and perfection of 
form. 

Poetry cannot be made by rule. The more the 
rules are thought of the less is the result in 
poetry. It is true enough that there must be 
a groundwork of rule, and compliance with the 
fixed requirements of form ; but the poet who is 
obliged to keep these in his mind, and to work 



40 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

conscious of them, is sure never to produce any- 
thing worthy of the name of true art. The poet 
who counts his syllables to see if the lines are of 
the right length, is no poet worthy of the name. 
He must know as by instinct, even more surely 
than if he counted, that they are right, or there is 
no hope for him. The musician gives much time 
to the study of the technique of his art, and he 
recognizes that it rests on a basis of rigid mathe- 
matical rule ; but with this there must be a soul 
for music, an ear that tells if it is right, and a 
heart that catches up in an instant all the pathos 
and loveliness of it. The passion and the in- 
stinct for music absent, the most perfect knowl- 
edge of the rules and laws is utterly incapable of 
producing it. These given, music will result, 
even if there is no technical knowledge. 

So it is in poetry ; the soul must have a touch 
of heavenly beauty in it, or no poetry can grow 
out of it. Rules will not put it in or take it out. 
This the rules will do, how^ever; dry it up, and 
turn the pure stream of that water of life from a 
babbling brook full of delight, as it pours down 
the mountain side, into a mere ditch, very regu- 
lar, but wanting all charm and beauty. Not that 
there can be genuine poetry without rules and 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 41 

form, for these are always necessary in their 
place ; but they are, and must be kept, subordi- 
nate; and they are not to be enforced against 
the poet who chooses to create some other 
way for himself than that which is in common 
use. 

Life is not manifested in customs and costumes, 
but in spontaneity and spirit. The more man 
lives by conventional rule the more he lives on 
the surface of his nature, and the more he fails to 
reach the deepest springs of original and noble 
purpose. If he lives to conform he lives feebly, 
and he can never be himself in a life-giving man- 
ner. So in poetry ; it must come to life and 
expression, not out of the conventional and tradi- 
tional, but out of what the poet has seen for him- 
self, and experienced with his own soul. If it 
has this latter quality, it can in some measure 
dispense with the merely technical requirements. 
All true poetry is lived ; is music, harmony, and 
grandeur in the soul first, and then puts itself into 
words in that way which will best produce upon 
others the same effects which have been produced 
upon the poet or which will kindle in other hearts 
the living fire of truth and beauty which were 
first in his heart. If this power is carried swiftly 



42 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

and surely from one to the other, and the poet 
has the gift of making others see what he has 
seen, feel what he has felt, and believe what he 
has believed, the form little matters. It is this 
power of kindling the fires of truth and beauty 
in other souls which is the real power and charm 
of the poet ; and if this is wanting, all else that 
is of much value is also absent. It is not enough 
to please, if pleasing is all, though that has its 
place and its value as truly as other things have 
theirs; but genuine poetry is the outgrowth of 
what is otherwise intrinsically good, and for other 
reasons. Nothing genuinely pleases which does 
not do more than gratify for the moment. True 
pleasure grows out of roots of beauty, truth, and 
right ; and it must always have ends other than 
its own. 

The poet must be either a teacher or an artist ; 
^or, what is better, he may be both in one. There- 
fore, he can never stop at form or at what 
delights and charms merely. He must go on to 
the expression of sometliing of deep and real 
abidingness of thought or beauty. This comes at 
last to be the real thing for which he works, 
which he seeks to bring into expression with such 
power and grandeur in it as he can produce, and 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 43 

which he wills to send forth for the sake of this 
higher impression on the world. 

Poetry is the interpretation of life in response 
to emotion and imagination. Its object is the 
satisfaction of ideal desire. It gives pleasure 
by means of its artistic form, the human mind 
naturally seeking to express its more elevated 
thoughts and emotions in rhythmic language. 
This is the artistic meaning of poetry; but the 
soul of it is the life of man uplifted and trans- 
formed by the world of the ideal. There is noth- 
ing of poetry in the bare realism of nature and 
life. Nature is lovely only when a poet's eye 
looks upon it. Fishermen toiling with their nets 
or peasants bowing at the sound of a bell call- 
ing them to prayer are objects of artistic pleasure 
because of the human sentiments associated with 
them. A man exists before a poet is possible ; 
and it is the man's soul which gives to poetry all 
there is in it that delights other men. 

If poetry is an imitation, it is an imitation of 
what is in the heart of the poet, and not of what 
is in nature. Not even Homer can imitate a 
mountain in his verse. He can so describe the 
mountain as to awaken in others the same emo- 
tions which it produced in him when he beheld 



44 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

it. The beauty of poetry, its cliarm and its 
power, have come out of the poet's own mind, as 
it has been impressed by the beauties of nature 
or the deeds of men. True it is that if nature 
did not arouse him the poet would not create ; 
but the process always begins in the seeing heart 
of the poet. It is "a living soul" out of which 
poetry grows. The life to which great thoughts 
and deep feelings come is the fountain whence 
flows the poetic stream. 

The true poet is the man of his time who is 
most alive, who feels, sees, and knows the most. 
In the measure of his life he is the greatest man 
of his age and country. His eye sees farther and 
more clearly; his heart beats more warmly and 
with a more universal sympathy ; his thought 
runs deej)er and with a swifter current, than is the 
case with other men. He is the oracle and guide, 
the inspirer and the friend, of those to whom he 
sings. He creates life under the ribs of dead 
tradition; he illumines the present with heart- 
flames of beaconing truth, and he makes the fu- 
ture seem like home-joys far off but drawing ever 
nigher. The poet is the world's lover. He is the 
youth to whom fresh thoughts come with each 
new generation. 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 45 

In a logical, scientific, and philosophical sense 
poetry has nothing to teach. When it aims at 
being didactic it ceases to be poetry, and becomes 
prose — often very dull — written in the form of 
verse. What poetry has to teach it teaches as 
poetry, and not as morality, science, or history. 
It is very certain, however, that the true poet 
has something to say which he alone is capable 
of making known to the world. 

Art reveals to us the fact that nature is free 
rather than bound fast in law. It shows the life 
there is in nature, its spontaneity, its vitality of 
essence, its spiritual meaning, and its freedom 
within its own limits. It is an incarnation of 
the All-Beautiful and the All-Loving, and it ever 
glows and blooms with the life that comes from 
Him. It touches the heart of man with a sense 
of life immeasurable, and ever invites him to 
aspirations and ideals beyond itself, and which 
it cannot in any degree satisfy. The natural is 
an invitation to the ideal, and it will not adopt 
to its heart those content with itself. 

The poet is one whose whole being is respon- 
sive to the inner spirit of nature and life. The 
world-poets affect us by the completeness of their 
personality, by the roundness and integrity of 



46 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

their manhood, and b}^ the symmetry of the 
impression they make. Poets of an inferior gen- 
ius may possess an exaggerated development of 
feeling, fanc}^, and imagination ; but the world- 
poets show no such defect. They have balance, 
soundness, and solidarity of the faculties. There 
is no excess in imagination, no deficiency in rea- 
son ; but every mental gift interprets itself with 
power and grandeur in tlie art of poetry. 
/ True poetry is for instruction as much as for 
pleasure, though it inculcate no formal lessons. 
Right moral teaching is by example far more 
than by precept ; and the real poet teaches 
through the higher purpose he arouses, by the 
stimulus lie gives, and by the purer motive he 
awakens. He gives no precepts to recite, no 
homilies to con over, no rules for formal repe- 
tition ; but he gives the spirit of life and the 
impulse of true activity. An infallible test of 
the great poet is that he inspires us wij>h a sense 
of the richness and grandeur of life./ If his pas- 
sion is wild, his fancy exuberant, his morality 
intrusive, or his reasoning dogmatic, he cannot 
sit in the company of the greatest. Homer, 
Dante, and Shakspere impress us with the 
grand proportions and the perfect healthiness 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 47 

of their personality. No exaggeration and no 
retardation are to be discovered in tliem. Each 
represents the highest spirit of the society to 
which he belongs, what is best and most vital 
in it, and with a wonderful completeness of 
interpretation. Neither made it his purpose to 
teach the purest religion and philosophy of his 
time, but each has done that with a finish and 
clearness we find nowhere else. Not a touch of 
didacticism is to be found in the poetry of these 
men ; but what teaching is there I what grand 
views of life ! what profound insights into the 
highest facts of human nature ! what stimulus 
to true activity of soul! 

Byron is the poet of the excess of passion, 
Wordsworth of the excess of intellect, and Keats 
of the excess of imagination. It is their excesses 
almost alone which hinder these men from taking 
their places with the great world-poets ; but the 
exaggeration in each case is fatal to any such 
claim. In the case of each there is some claim 
of truth which finds striking emphasis, but we 
feel that it needs correction by the adjusting 
law of symmetry. Truth is not made larger by a 
want of harmony; but it is hindered of its right- 
ful results. As a great spiritual teacher Words- 



48 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

worth loses in power because he is not a true poet 
in the largest sense. When the poet stands clear- 
est revealed, the universe he would interpret is 
brought the nearest to our sight. 

Art never is an object of pure enjoyment alone. 
If so accepted in theory, it never is so in reality. 
It modifies thought, it influences moral action, it 
affects motives, and it changes the whole tone of 
the emotional life. It may be enjoyed without 
speculative bias, but not without stamping its 
essential qualities on the motives and actions of 
its devotees. However much inclined the indi- 
vidual artist may be to yield himself joyfully to 
beauty wherever he finds it, luxuriating in the 
stimulus it gives to his emotional and imaginative 
life, letting it flood his soul with pure delight and 
rapture, it surely influences the whole tenor of 
his moral and intellectual being. An evil effect 
has been wrought on the human spirit by the 
very fact of disconnecting art from intellectual 
truth and moral action. Especially does the 
presence of art affect bodies of men in a manner 
the most profoundly significant. When men 
yield themselves to the enjoyment of beauty in 
and for itself, moral enervation and intellectual 
lassitude follow. The times of great moral awak- 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 49 

ening, when the sense of duty presses home 
closely upon the mind and upon the conscience, 
are never those in which art flourishes. On the 
other hand, when art is divorced from ethics and 
philosophy, its influence is destructive of a harmo- 
nious life. If pursued for its own sake, it 
becomes a gilded palace of corruption; a palace 
fair outwardly with color, music, and joy, but 
iuAvardly disordered and pestilential. Balance 
and harmony are absolutely essential to the truest 
results in art. 

The negative effect of art is enough in itself to 
show us that there must be in it something to 
teach, when it is true to its own functions. 
Especially is this true of poetry, which, more than 
any other form of art, relates itself to what is 
truest, purest, and most aspiring in human nature. 
There has never been a great poet who was not 
also a prophet and a guide to men. Homer, 
^schylus, Vergil, Lucretius, Dante, Cervantes, 
Shakspere, Milton, Goethe, and Victor Hugo 
have impressed the world with their own person- 
ality in a way to stamp indelibly upon human 
thought their conception of its nature and 
its higher issues. Was Shakspere no teacher 
because we cannot tell of what religion he was or 



50 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

what philosophy he accepted ? We may not find 
in him a Catholic or a Protestant theology, an 
inductive or an idealistic philosophy ; but we do 
find in him a profoundly wise and deep-searching 
interpretation of life itself. He has sympathy 
with whatever is human ; he teaches us to know 
the heart and the mind of man. 

The poet is a builder of worlds, and the progen- 
itor of ideal beings. What is he shapes to new 
fashions and brings to a more consummated 
expression. He reveals the heart of the actual, 
and he forecasts the ideal. What is to be 
delights him, as well as what has been. What is 
to be he knows by what is, for he reads the 
prophetic meaning of all life and nature. He is 
man's foreseer and God's foreteller. The world 
is a development and man a becoming ; but the 
grandeur of this growth through endless ages the 
poet makes known by the spirit of aspiring life 
which is at the heart of his noblest song. 

There is no faith too great for the poet and no 
hope too large. Not the petty griefs and vexa- 
tions of the moment make up for him the sum of 
life ; but he sees the rich variety of the world, 
and that its objects blend into a glorious harmony 
and beauty. With heroic purpose he goes forth 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 51 

to meet the future, confident it will open to him 
richer treasures than any he has known hitherto, 
and that an exhaustless wealth of beauty and 
joy awaits his search. 

The poet worships at the triple shrine of 
beauty, love, and truth ; and his mission it is to 
teach men that all other objects and places of 
veneration are but faint imitations of this one 
true form of faith. Beauty is blind until it is 
joined to truth, and unfaithful until it is joined to 
love. The winsomeness of beauty, the delight of 
love, and the mastership of truth are to the poet 
forms of the highest good, and all of them find 
issue in the glory of a perfected life. For them- 
selves they have no end or object but to serve 
each other, and to give life a higher consumma- 
tion. When harmonized, so that they become 
one in purpose and spirit, they are the face of 
God revealed to the vision of the poet. All 
blessing and glory and honor come through them, 
and are made known by them. Life ever comes 
short of its promise until these three walk hand 
in hand to give it guidance. Not three, but one, 
are beauty, love, and truth; for they are but 
forms of the same ideal reality. They are ever 
the poet's guides and inspirers, and from them 



52 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

come the harmonic outburst of his song. They 
teach him the meaning of life, and reveal to him 
its inmost glory. 

The poet is not a maker of rhymes, but the 
interpreter of life. Whoever gives to life a grand 
and true and harmonic interpretation, whatever 
the form of expression he adopts, is a poet. The 
being of poetry is in its thought, its sentiment, 
and its inspiring quality, and not in its form. 
The highest need of man ever is to have his own 
being, his own heart, and his own noblest desire, 
interpreted for him, so that he may know himself, 
and what his true relations to life and man. The 
poet gives him this interpretation, and in a 
form the most subtly satisfactory and impressive. 
There is a quickening power in the poet's loftiest 
words that penetrates the very being of man, and 
transforms him with a new desire and a finer 
purpose. To give to man's life the harmony of 
the richest music, and the fulness of being Avhich 
comes of blending his life with God's, is to the 
poet his mission and his delight. 

Whether Spenser, Shakspere, Wordsworth, or 
Tennyson, the poet is a dreamer of dreams, and of 
dreams that come closer than other men's waking 
thoughts to the inmost secrets of life. He talks 



THE POET AS A TEACHER. 53 

with nature as with a friend and a lover, and she 
opens to him the book in which her secrets are 
written. It is the ideal truth of God he finds 
throughout all the phases of life and nature, and 
truth which is fit to minister to man as a being 
of rational aims and a moral destiny. 

The poet is the true teacher of men, for he 
inspires and exalts them, and opens to them a 
knowledge of their real being. He gives them 
life and hope and eternal joy, as they partake of 
his thought and catch the spirit he would impart. 
He has no dogmas to assert, no precepts to incul- 
cate, but the glory of life to reveal. His mission 
it is to give life more of harmony, to widen the 
realms of sympathy, and to deepen the power of 
sentiment. His manner of teaching is the same 
that love makes use of, by access of life, and not 
by outward admonition. His precepts are in- 
sights, his dogmas intuitions, and the knowledge 
he imparts purer sentiments and sympathies. He 
is God's forerunner and prophet, and the blessed 
companion of man. With eyes lifted and heart 
buoyant, he foresees the future through his knowl- 
edge of the ideal, and he leads us to forsake the 
bare present. 



II, 



TENNYSON. 



Melody gives a sensuous existence to poetry ; for does not the mean- 
ing of a poem become embodied in melody ? — JDeethoven. 

As long as the English language is spoken, the word-music of Tennyson 
■will charm the ear ; and when English has become a dead language, his 
wonderful concentration of thought into luminous speech, the exquisite 
pictures in which he has blended all the hues of reflection, feeling, and 
fancy, will cause him to be read as we read Homer, Pindar, and Horace. 
— George Eliot. 

Color, like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil in waves so 
rich that we do not miss the central form. Through all his reflnements, 
too, he has reached the public, — a certificate of good sense and general 
power, since he who aspires to be the English poet must be as large as 
London, but in his own kind. But he wants a subject, and climbs no 
mount of vision to bring its secrets to the people. He contents himself 
with describing the Englishman as he is, and proposes no better. There 
are all degrees in poetry, and we must be thankful for every beautiful 
talent. — Emerson. 

Not of the howling dervishes of song, 
Who craze the brain Avith their delirious dance, 
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart ! 

Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong, 
To thee our love and our allegiance, 
For thy allegiance to the poet's art. 

— Longfellow. 

No English poet, with the possible exception of Byron, has so minis- 
tered to the natural appetite for poetry in the people as Tennyson. 
Byron did this— unintentionally, as all genius does — by warning and 
arousing their dormant sentiment : Tennyson by surprising them into 
the recognition of a new luxury in the harmony and movement of poetic 
sj>eech, — Jiayard Taylor, 



n. 

TENNYSON". 

English literature divides itself into well- 
defined periods. The age of Elizabeth cannot be 
mistaken for that of any other, and its great 
4eading features have not since been repeated. 
Not less marked was the eighteenth centur}^ a 
time of skepticism in philosophy, classicism in 
literature, courtly formality in social life, and 
Deism in religion. Reaction from that period, 
under the influence of Methodism, the French 
revolution, German idealism, and the growth of 
naturalism, led to the great literary era of the 
first half of the nineteenth century. That era 
exhibited a love of the romantic, as seen in Wal- 
ter Scott; of the natural world as the dwelling- 
place of the Divine, as seen in Wordsworth; of 
faith in a new social era for mankind, as seen in 
Shelley. 

Throughout the revolutionary period was ex- 
hibited a remarkable faith in the regenerating 

57 



68 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

power of ideas. Men expected to see a new 
world rise out of the old order of formal and 
stagnant life. In all directions burst forth an 
eager desire for fresh and spontaneous thought, 
and for a natural expression of the human facul- 
ties. Freedom in political and social life was not 
more clearly demanded than in literature and art. 
The human mind burst its bonds, and soared 
away into an atmosphere of pure inspiration. It 
seemed to have gained a new access of power, to 
have found itself capable of higher things than it 
had before dared undertake. 

The classical habit of mind of the era of Pope 
and Johnson was now discarded. The new law 
of literary composition was that of the old say- 
ing, " Look in thy heart and write." Sentiment, 
passion, sympathy, aspiration, were now free, and 
spoke themselves out with abandon and joy. 
Burns singing of rustic life and of a humanity 
knowing no distinctions but those which pertain 
to man as man ; Wordsworth turning to nature 
as a mystical revelation of God, and to the sim- 
ple life of the plainest people ; Shelley crying out 
for liberty and an unrestrained utterance of the 
thoughts which were in him, make plain to us the 
nature of the revolutionary era, as it was ex- 



TENNYSON. 59 

hibited in English literature. Men seemed to 
have lost themselves in emotion and aspiration, 
and in a desire to accept the simple truth of 
things. 

Something too ethereal and over-wrought was 
in the Wordsworthian time. It laid too high a 
claim to the creative power of genius, a claim 
which time cannot wholly justify. It saw in 
genius something abnormal or supernatural, some- 
thing that sharply set off those possessing it from 
all other men. It was a time of too much 
excitement and of too buoyant a temper. A re- 
action was inevitable, because human nature can- 
not always exist on the heights. 

From about the year 1840 a new era is to be 
dated in English literature. Signs of it were to 
be seen even earlier, while many traces of the 
revolutionary period remain until the present 
day. The most effective of causes in overthrow- 
ing the revolutionary idea was the discovery of 
the continuity of human development. There 
were men who saw this truth even when the rev- 
olutionary fervor was at its height. In an 
artistic way rio one saw it more distinctly and 
absolutely than Walter Scott, all whose work 
grew out of his happy vision of the continuous 



60 POETS AND PKOBLEMS. 

life flowing through the ages of human history. 
Even Wordsworth saw it most clearly in his 
later years ; and it was one of the causes of that 
reaction which took place in his mind. It was 
manifest in the romantic movement in German}^, 
which led so many of the most ardent of the 
younger poets into the Catholic church. It 
appeared in the Oxford reaction in behalf of the 
life of the earlier ages of the church. More 
'distinctly than all, as a conception of human life, 
it found expression in the transcendental philoso- 
phy of Germany. Transcendentalism had its 
revolutionary side ; but it also had its side of 
faith in an unfolding order in human affairs. 

Out of the revolutionary period came the idea 
of progress. In France progress was understood 
to mean revolution ; in Germany it was accepted 
as the outcome of spiritual causes. Rationalism, 
working in a revolutionary period, hoped to 
create the world of human society anew, in 
obedience to reason and the idea of right. Grad- 
ually it appeared that each generation is a 
development from the preceding ones, and that 
there are causes in human nature itself why life 
must flow on slowly, and along appointed chan- 
nels. If intuition opens to the individual the 



TENNYSON. 61 

avenues of the highest truth, none the less for 
mankind there is a process of development and an 
order in the unfoldment of its manifestations. 

From the speculative idea of progress, aided by 
wonderful investigations into the order of natural 
phenomena, grew the doctrine of evolution. The 
result has been a remarkable increase of con- 
fidence in a historic continuity underlying all 
movements of humanity in every direction. 
There has followed an overthrowing of the revo- 
lutionar}^ idea in politics, in speculative thought, 
and in literature. The past of mankind has been 
studied as never before. With the clew of con- 
tinuity every period of human history has been 
subjected to new investigation and interpretation. 
The effect on literature has been of great impor- 
tance, leading to a sympathetic appreciation of 
the spirit of past times, and to a cultivation of 
the ideas expressed in the great periods of human 
thought. 

Even in the revolutionary era Keats and Lan- 
dor had been drawn to Greek thought and life. 
To all intents Landor was a pagan, a lover of the 
beauty and freshness inherent in the Greek 
mythology, and full of scorn for the high moral 
aim demanded by Christianity. The tendency 



62 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

thus manifest has found ample expression since 
the death of the marvellous Keats, who, more 
than any other, revived the spirit of Greek 
beauty in modern times. Almost every poet of 
the Victorian era has been influenced by the 
objectivity of Greek art, and by a desire to renew 
its life of natural beauty and healthy develop- 
ment. Other poets have sought to bring back 
the uncorrupted ardor and naturalness of the 
time of Chaucer. They would sing of the old 
fresh times of the world, before men were bur- 
dened with too many thoughts, and ere they were 
anxious to solve the problem of the universe. 

As distinguishing the evolutionary period from 
the time of revolution the growth in the love of 
beauty and art is most significant. Until the 
present century men had not thought of beauty 
for its own sake, as something to be cultivated 
for its promise of , good to the human spirit. Now 
they turned to art with unbounded enthusiasm. 
This influence is very marked in the poetry of 
Tennyson, as compared with that of Words- 
worth. To the inward motive and spirit of 
poetry, Coleridge and those of his school gave 
the chief importance. Great as Coleridge was as 
an artist, he laid the main stress on that in poetry 



TENNYSON. 63 

which makes it an interpretation of human life. 
Especially was this true of Wordsworth, who was 
a prophet not less than a poet. Beautiful ideas 
made the poetry of the revolutionary era with 
those men who were its most characteristic prod- 
ucts. They did not give attention to form so 
much as to sentiment and emotion, for these 
brought to their poetry life and an expansive 
power. Yet there were men, like Keats, Shelley, 
Coleridge, and Moore, to whom metrical beauty 
was a joy and an inspiration. Their influence, 
working in combination with the art-revival, has 
served to make the poetry of the Victorian era 
one of artistic beauty far more than of ideas. 
With the death of Wordsworth poetic inspira- 
tion suffered a relapse or a diminution in its 
power. What had been a thing of quickening 
life became a thing of joyous beauty. The 
spirit of man sought a new means of expression, 
and poetry for the time ceased to be a divine 
afflatus. 

That which most of all characterizes the poetry 
of the Victorian era is its growth as an art. In 
other words, the poets of the present time are 
moved with the one thought that poetry is an 
art to be cultivated and developed. They do 



64 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

not sing for the sake of giving fitting expres- 
sion to their inner life, but that they may fashion 
something lovely to the artistic perceptions. It is 
beauty of words, rather than beauty of thought, 
which they seek. Poetry is to them an art, 
rather than an inspiration. 

I The poetry of the Victorian era has also a 
tendency towards realism. This is partly due 
to the influence of Goethe and Wordsworth, and 
partly to the growth of scientific habits of mind. ^ 
Wordsworth was a realist in his poetry because 
in his philosophy he was an idealist. He saw in 
the outward world a direct manifestation of God ; 
therefore it was to be accepted in its totality, and 
in its freshness of beauty. Another spirit came 
into poetry with the growth of scientific specula- 
tion, a spirit of doubt concerning the legitimacy 
of spiritual ideas and ideals. Over the fair dream 
of a world of light within this world of sense a 
shadow of doubt was cast. To ^yordsworth, the 
real world was that of the light which never was 
on land or sea, a light far more deeply interfused 
with the truth of things than is that of setting 
suns. To the new thought which came with 
science there was a lessening of faith in the 
spiritual as spiritual, and an increase of doubt 



TENKTSON. 65 

concerning the ideal as something beyond the 
present apparent order of things. 

As yet no one can say what will be the 
final artistic and literary result of the move- 
ment towards scientific speculation. That it 
has not been helpful to literature can now be 
said with perfect assurance, so far as its effect 
on poetry is concerned. It has created an atmos- 
phere not conducive to poetic inspiration. The 
poet is a sensitive being, easily discouraged, and 
quickly made to feel that his singing is not 
required. To the poets science has as yet 
given no inspiration, no grand themes, no con- 
ception of life which is to them like a trumpet's 
call. Theoretically, science should put no obsta- 
cles in the way of the poet ; but practicall}^ it 
has acted as a check of the most serious kind. 
In an age when new speculative ardors are awak- 
ened in men by the doctrine of evolution, the 
poets turn back to Greece, to mediaeval life, or 
to the time of Chaucer for their inspiration as 
for their themes. 

The new conception of the world which science 
has given us, working a vast change in our ideas 
about nature and man, must have a profound in- 
fluence on the poets. That influence cannot at 



6Q POETS AND PROBLEMS, 

first be felt in any other manner than one of 
depression and exhaustion. The scientific de- 
velopment of the eighteenth century was accom- 
panied by weariness and weakness on the part of 
poetry. Every sign at the present time also 
indicates a lapse of poetic inspiration, and a 
growth of the human spirit in the direction of 
the pictorial arts, prose fiction, and historic 
insight. 

As the individual must change the direction of 
his activity from time to time, so must a nation. 
When imagination is in full exercise, understand- 
ing must grow weak. When reason lords it over 
the life of man, artistic insight is repressed. In 
an age of revolutionary enthusiasm the sense of 
historic continuity is lost. None the less, in an 
age of scientific passion imagination loses its 
sway over men and ceases to be a guide in their 
conceptions of the world. 

Nothing could have been more easily predicted, 
from a knowledge of mankind, than that the 
revolutionary era could not long continue. All 
high enthusiasms soon exhaust themselves and 
leave the human spirit discouraged and dis- 
traught. The age of Plato was a short one, and 
so was that of Raphael and that of Shakspere. 



TENNYSON. 6T 

After singing through the rosy morn or dewy eve, 
men turn to the tasks of the day or to the slum- 
bers of the night. So it is that an age of science 
succeeds to an age of poetry. It must needs be 
so, for poetry cannot feed us ever. We need 
truth as well as imagination, faith as well as song. 
The human spirit has an expansive power, which 
enables it to renew itself in fresh directions, when 
worn out by its highest efforts. 

The Victorian era makes manifest its genius in 
prose fiction rather than in poetry. Men who, in 
a more poetic age, would have written verse of 
the best, now give themselves to the writing of 
novels. At the present time the novel answers to 
the demands of public taste in literature, because 
it is capable of expressing a greater degree of 
realism than is possible to poetry, and because it 
deals almost wholly with the experiences and 
characters of men. The nineteenth century has 
been marked above all others by its interest in 
man as man, and by its growing love of whatever 
pertains to humanity. It shows a deep wish to 
know about men as they are, in the actual facts of 
their daily lives. The old love of the hero and 
the ideal man has passed away. Nothing would 
less easily fit into the mood of the present time 



6S POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

than the spirit of chivalry. The artificial inter- 
pretation of life, out of which chivalry grew, and 
its continual striving for effect, find no response 
in the temper of the present time. Not by any 
means wholly given over to mechanic invention 
and commercial enterprise, as Rusk in would have 
us believe, our time wishes to lay hold of what is 
real, and to see the world and life as they are in 
themselves. To such a spirit poetry does not 
seem to be congenial. 

There is no such poetic exhaustion at the 
present time, however, as that which took place 
in the eighteenth century. True poetry is being 
written ; but it is of another kind than that of 
the age of Wordsworth. The poet now finds his 
inspiration in man, not in nature. It is the 
doings, the hopes, the aspirations, and the pas- 
sions of men which give him his themes and his 
inspiration. This is an exhaustless source of 
quickening to the poet, and one which ought to 
stimulate him to his highest effort. The atmos- 
phere of the present time may not be sufficiently 
electric to awaken the poet to a passion in behalf 
of man ; but it is of man he sings when he gives 
us song which has in it true force and fire. More 
worthy in the poetry of the Victorian era than 



TENNYSON. 69 

any greatness of inspiration is its sympathy with 
man in all his moods, struggles, and hopes. In 
that appears a genuine promise for humanity, if 
not for song. And why should there not be in it 
the highest promise for the future of poetry it- 
self? The poet is something more than an artist; 
and if he no longer writes great epics or trage- 
dies, he may write that which will prove of the 
greatest worth to his fellows. 

It is not to science we are to look for the future 
promise of poetry, but to the development of a 
deeper and a more sympathetic interest in man. 
Science is barren of all beauty until it has been 
transformed by the imagination, and made subser- 
vient to the ideal. The past and present of man 
afford beauty and inspiration in exhaustless 
store. History is a mighty panorama unfolding 
itself before the poet, from which he may select 
the scene most congenial to his genius and most 
stimulating to his gift of song. Nature will ever 
remain to the poet a source of joy and refresh- 
ment; but man will grow to be more and more 
the source of his inspiration. Love, sin, and 
death are themes no poet can render faded and 
old for those who come after him. Every child 
who comes into the world is a fresh poem, whose 



70 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

experiences of heart and soul, could they be fully 
sung, would cast in the shade all Iliads, ^neids, 
and Divine Comedies. 

The poetic spirit of the Victorian era has found 
its fullest and most characteristic expression iu 
the poetry of Tennyson. What is great and what 
is weak in it he has exhibited as no other has 
done; and his is likely to remain through all 
future time its one representative name. For a 
knowledge of its temper and its inspiration we 
must turn to him. 



I. 



Tennyson's ancestry was a good one, and the 
surroundings of his youth were favorable to the 
development of a poet. Noble names appear on 
the list of his forefathers ; and his own entrance 
into the nobility fits well into the traditions of 
his family. The place of his birth, however, lies 
far removed from all enterprise and active inter- 
ests ; and his home-life as a youth was quiet and 
simple. Somersby is a dreamy country village ; 
but the scenery about has much of rural beauty. 

The poet's father was a man of great stature, 
immense energy and strength, and of many ac- 
complishments. He had somewhat of genius ; 
and his vigorous mind sought expression in many 
directions, for he was a poet, painter, musi- 
cian, architect, mathematician, and linguist. The 
mother was very sweet and gentle, gifted with a 
lively imagination, and devoutly religious. The 

71 



72 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

ten children of the family were handsome, bright, 
and poetic from their earliest years. They all 
began to make verses as soon as they could talk ; 
and a favorite amusement in the evenings and on 
rainy days was the writing of poetry and ro- 
mances. Four of the brothers have carried their 
early literary habits into manhood, though only in 
the case of Alfred has the literary taste been 
exercised other than as a pastime. 

Alfred Tennyson was very early a poet, and 
even at the age of five years he is said to have 
shouted to the wind, when out in a storm, in these 
words : — 

" I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind." 
When sent to Louth, the home of his mother, to 
attend the grammar school there, in company 
with Charles, he began to write poetry in earnest. 
He had already read Byron with the greatest 
delight, and he began to pore over all the books 
he could reach which would satisfy his taste for 
poetry. He was attracted to Chaucer and the 
early English poets, and to the Greek pastoral 
poets. Especially did he find delight in Theo- 
critus and Scott. At this time, also, he read 
Mallory's version of the legends of King Arthur, 
with the greatest enthusiasm. Such books as 



TENNYSON. 73 

these kindled his mind to a glow, and he was 
roused to great poetic projects. He planned a 
poem on King Arthur, laid out many schemes 
for it, wrote some fragments, but finally aban- 
doned the subject, to return to it in later years. 

While at Louth, in 1827, Charles and Alfred 
published a volume of poems, with the title, 
"Poems by Two Brothers." The names of the 
authors were not given. As the work of boys 
of eighteen and nineteen this volume showed 
much promise, but no one of the poems is of 
such merit as to attract any special interest 
apart from the fact that it came from Tennyson 
as a schoolboy. The mottoes and footnotes give 
evidence of much reading, but the style is affected 
by Byron, and the thought has no great value. 
The melody and perfect expression of later years 
did not appear here in such measure as to attract 
attention. 

In 1829, when nearly twenty years old, Tenny- 
son became a student at Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge University. Cambridge was at that time 
liberal in its tendencies, awake to new ideas, 
and influenced by German thought. It was the 
centre of the rising Broad Church movement, as 
Oxford was, at the same time, under the influ- 



74 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

ence of Newman, Keble, and others, developing 
the High Church spirit. While it may not have 
been wholly in sympathy with such men as 
Maurice, Robertson, Kingsley, and Arnold, yet 
it did not close its doors to their influence, and 
Tennyson was deeply affected by the thought 
and spirit of this party; and his poetry is full 
of their religious ideas. 

--^TTennyson's tutor at Trinity was Whewell, who 
is said to have had such high hopes for his genius 
as to allow him privileges he gave to no others. 
Among the young men Tennyson knew at Cam- 
bridge, and who have since made themselves 
known to the world, were Thackeray, his inti- 
mate friend of after years ; Richard Monkton 
Milnes, the poet, who became Lord Houghton; 
Spedding, the biographer of Bacon; Trench and 
Alford, poets, theologians, and biblical students ; 
Kemble, student of the literature and history of 
the northern nations of Europe ; Kinglake, the 
historian of the Crimean war, and several others. 
Most of these men became his intimate friends 
and ardent admirers. He has addressed sonnets 
to Kemble (" Sonnet to J. M. K."), and to Brook- 
field, another of his intimate friends. Among 
others who have had a deep and abiding influ- 



TENNYSON. 75 

ence on his life and thouglit were John Sterling 
and Frederic Maurice, both of them leaders in 
the Broad Church movement. One of his finest 
personal poems is addressed to Maurice ; and he 
has also addressed one full of tenderness and 
sympathy to Spedding ("To J. S.") on the 
death of his brother. 

While yet at the University, in 1830, Tenny- 
son published in London his " Poems, Chiefly 
Lyrical," a little volume of great promise. It 
contained those remarkable portraitures of fair 
women, which show so well the music of his 
poetry and the artistic tendency of his muse. It 
contained, also, his " Deserted House," one of the 
noblest of his shorter poems, his "Recollections 
of the Arabian Nights," "The Poet," "Circum- 
stance," and other exquisite pieces. Even at this 
time, when only a little past twenty, Tennyson 
had begun to attract attention, of course mainly 
among those who knew him personally. In all 
his nature he is a poet, and his friends early saw 
that he was destined to do something excellent. 
So soon as 1830, before his volume of poems was 
published, Alford made this entry in his diary: 
"Looked over the Tennysons' poems at night; 
exquisite fellows. I know no two books of poetry 



76 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

which have given me so much pleasure as their 
works." He referred to the volume published in 
Louth and to Charles Tennyson's poems of 1830. 

A little later than this, in 1832, the sister of 
his friend Kemble, since known to the world 
as "Fanny Kemble," wrote these words about 
Tennyson, now published in her "Records of a 
Girlhood": "I am always a little disappointed 
with the exterior of our poet when I look at 
him, in spite of his eyes, which are very fine ; 
but his head and face, striking and dignified as 
they are, are always too ponderous and massive 
for beauty in so young a man ; and every now 
and then there is a slight sarcastic expression 
about his mouth, that almost frightens me, in 
spite of his shy manner and habitual silence. 
But, after all, it is delightful to see and to be 
with one that one admires and loves for what 
he has done, as I do him." 

At this time Edward Fitzgerald, the translator 
of Omar Khayyam, wrote of him as being " a man 
at all points, of grand proportion and feature, sig- 
nificant of that inward chivalry becoming his 
ancient and honorable race." 

It is very pleasant to have these early glimpses 
into Tennyson's character, these indications of 



TENNYSOK. 77 

his rising fame, and this hint of the interest he 
awakened in those who knew him. He had 
already done work which gave him a command- 
ing place as a poet. Now he was about to 
advance his fame by the publication, in 1832, 
of his "Poems." This volume showed a distinct 
advance on the one of two years before, in the 
way of a finer power of expression, deeper 
thought, and a clearer mastery of all the ele- 
ments of poetry. It contained some of the 
best of his work, as well as some of those 
poems which have become most popular. Among 
the best known of his poems are "The May 
Queen," "The Miller's Daughter," and "Lady 
Clara Yere de Vere." Of the poems which 
have attracted attention by their thought, and 
their lofty spirit of inquiry into the subtler 
questions of life, are the "Palace of Art" and 
the "Lotos-Eaters." This volume also showed 
how greatly Tennyson was affected by Keats, 
and how intense was his interest in Greek sub- 
jects. 

After leaving Cambridge, without graduation, 
Tennyson spent a few years at his father's house ; 
at least that remained his only home for some 
time longer. Many of his friends visited him at 



78 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

the Somersby rectory, and pleasant glimpses of 
their life are to be found in " In Memoriam." 

O sound to rout the brood of cares, 
The sweep of scythe in morning dew, 
The gust that round the garden flew, 

And tumbled half the mellowing pears. 

O bliss, when all in circle drawn 

About him, heart and ear were fed 

To hear him, as he lay and read 
The Tuscan poets on the lawn : 

Or in the all-golden afternoon 
A guest, or happy sister, sung. 
Or here she brought the harp and flung 

A ballad to the brightening moon. 

Tennyson makes Arthur Hallam the centre of 
this group, and he doubtless was its bright particu- 
lar star. One of his intimate associates remarks of 
Hallam that it was of him above all his contem- 
poraries that great and lofty expectations were to 
be formed. His father said that he seemed to 
tread the earth as a spirit from some better world. 
Tennyson has also said that he was as near per- 
fection as a mortal man can be. Hallam became 
engaged in marriage to Tennyson's sister. 

When the poet's mother moved to Hampstead, 
near London, not far from 1840, that became his 
home. At this time he also had rooms in 
London, but he was obliged to live very economi- 



TENNYSON. 79 

cally, and he spent much of his time wandering 
about the country. We hear of him in the Isle of 
Wight, in Cornwall, in Surrey, or elsewhere ; 
sometimes stopping at country hotels, sometimes 
living with the farmers along his way, sometimes 
conversing with the common people, and some- 
times sitting by himself reading one of the Greek 
poets or an old English author. We know little 
of these twenty years from 1830 to 1850, almost 
no account of them having been given to the 
public. For the most part, he kept aloof from 
society, and he avoided public notice. When he 
was in London he had rooms at Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, and he was on intimate terms with 
Thackeray, Carlyle, and other literary men. He 
is said to have spent much of his time at a farm- 
house near Maidstone, and he lived in Twicken- 
ham for a period of several years. In 1847, 
William Howitt, in his book on the homes and 
haunts of the English poets, gives this account of 
him: "It is very possible you may come across 
him in a country inn, with a foot on each hob of 
the fireplace, a volume of Greek in one hand, his 
meerschaum in the other." His literary friend- 
ships and his social tastes we may get some hint 
of in the lines sent him by Landor : — 



80 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson, 

Come and share my haunch of venison. 

I have, too, a bin of claret ; 

Good, but better when you share it. 

Tho' 'tis only a small bin. 

There's a stock of it within. 

And as sure as I'm a rhymer, 

Half a butt of Rudesheimer. 

In 1849, one who seems to have known him 
well gave this description of him : " It is 
pleasant to know that a great poet's household is 
among the number of his admirers. . . . Tenny- 
son avoids general society, preferring to sit quietly 
with a friend, discussing the fancies that pour in 
his mind. He has no conversational force or 
brilliancy, hates arguing. . . . He is occasionally 
visible to his friends in London for a month or so, 
but to see him in his best mood you must catch 
him with his cigar, or under a tree lounging on 
the grass on a warm lazy day. . . . He is reserved 
in his habits, has a fine intellectual face, and is 
very calm and self-possessed. . . . Lately he has 
been rewarded by the Queen with a pension of 
two hundred pounds a year. . . . The pension 
came very opportune, he having lost most of his 
small patrimony in a speculation." 

In Caroline Fox's Memories there are some 
very pleasant glimpses of him in these years. He 



TENNYSON. 81 

seems to have been a frequent visitor to Corn- 
wall, where the Foxes lived. At one time, in his 
anxiety to behold the sea, he stumbled in the 
dark, and hurt his leg so that he was laid up for 
six weeks. Then his surgeon introduced the 
poet to his friends in the village, by whom he was 
kindly received, and who sent him on his way, 
when cured, to stop with other friends, who were 
keepers of little groceries and shops. At another 
time, a miner hid behind a stone wall to see him 
as he passed; for all the miners had read his 
poems, knowing well who he was. Again, he 
visited the Foxes to see some fine paintings, and 
to gossip with the bright young ladies there. 

During ten years, after publishing his " Poems " 
of 1832, Tennyson was silent as a poet, except as 
an occasional short piece appeared in an annual or 
magazine. In 1842 his " Poems," in two volumes, 
were published, containing such portions of his 
former volumes as he thought worthy of preserva- 
tion, together with much new work, including 
some of the best that he has ever done. Here for 
the first time appeared " Locksley Hall," "The 
Two Voices," "Dora," "Morte d' Arthur," and 
" Godiva." " The Princess " was published in 
1847, and "In Memoriam " in 1850. On the 



82 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

death of Wordsworth, Tennyson was made the 
Poet Laureate. After his marriage in 1851 he 
went to live on the Isle of Wight. In 1884 his 
name was placed on the list of English peers. 

The dates in Tennyson's career are mostly 
those of the publication of his books. His life 
has not been one of events, but one of literary 
toil. It has not been to him a matter of first im- 
portance where he lived or what company he 
kept. No one could have been more thoroughly 
the man of letters as to his employments than 
Tennyson has been. He has numbered among 
his friends most of the great men of his day in 
England, with whom from time to time he de- 
lights to hold intellectual intercourse. Carlyle 
found him " a true human soul " ; but he com- 
plained that Tennyson often " skips " him in his 
visits to London, " being a man solitary and sad." 
A lover of good company in hours of relaxation, 
Tennyson has found his delight in the quiet of 
his own haunts and in the companionship of his 
own thoughts. Not a man of society, he has 
mingled little with the fashionable world since 
finding a home at Freshwater. 

His house at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, known 
as Farringford, is a modest and cheerful one, set 



TENNYSON. 83 

in the midst of gardens and beautiful trees. Mrs. 
Ritchie says it " seemed like a charmed palace, 
with green walls without, and speaking walls 
within. There hung Dante with his solemn nose 
and wreath ; Italy gleamed over the doorways ; 
friends' faces lined the way; books filled the 
shelves, and a glow of crimson was everywhere; 
the great oriel drawing-room window was full of 
green and golden leaves, of the sound of birds 
and of the distant sea." The country all about 
is full of beauty and delight, a fit place for a poet 
to ramble in. Tennyson kept up his habits of 
former years, and spent mucli of his time amidst 
the beauties of nature, and in lone wanderings in 
out-of-the-way places. His friends often gath- 
ered at Farringford, and among them came many 
of the most noted men of the time. Tennyson 
is hospitable, and delights in gathering a select 
company about him. In 1869 he built a house 
at Aldworth, near Haslemere, in Surrey. He 
made a change of residence partly on account 
of the health of his wife, and partly because Far- 
ringford had become a place too much frequented 
to suit the tastes of the poet. He dreads all 
popularity and interviewing, and desires to be 
out of the reach of sight-seers. He is extremely 



84 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

shy and reticent, and greatly dislikes being lion- 
ized. 

Tennyson is large and powerful in build ; blunt 
and brusque in manner, and careless in his personal 
habits. He talks in a plain, simple manner, using 
Saxon words mainly. An American travelling in 
England saw Tennyson passing by on his daily 
walk, and described him as "above the middle 
size, with rather round shoulders, and a little 
stoop, a large nose, full and peaked beard, old, 
low, broad-brimmed black felt hat slouched over 
his face, long, thin, dark features, and spectacles." 
Visited at Farringford by Moncure D. Conway, 
we have another account of the poet : " Tall, of 
dark complexion, with a deep and blunt manner, 
almost Quaker-like in its plainness, he seemed to 
be the last person one would have picked out as 
the delicate and supersensitive idyllist. In con- 
versation he never rose to anything like the heroic 
strain, except when speaking of England. His 
pride in his country amounts to a passion. He 
had also a keen interest in scientific subjects, con- 
cerning which he had evidently read a great deal. 
He spoke much of the philosophical questions of 
the day." In the delightful book of Memories of 
Caroline Fox we have a description of Tennyson 



TENNYSON. 85 

based on a long and intimate friendship, and ani- 
mated with a woman's enthusiasm. " Tennyson 
is a grand specimen of a man," she says, "with a 
magnificent head, set on his shoulders like the 
capital of a mighty pillar. His hair is long and 
wavy, and covers a massive head. He wears a 
beard and mustache, which one begrudges as hid- 
ing so much of firm, powerful, but finely-chiselled 
mouth. His eyes are large and gray, and open 
wide when a subject interests him ; they are well 
shaded by the noble brow, with its strong lines of 
thought and suffering. I can quite understand 
Samuel Laurence calling it the best balance of 
head he had ever seen." 

Carlyle's description is not so enthusiastic, but 
far more interesting and suggestive. Its praise, 
coming from Carlyle, and its tone of friendly 
appreciation, mean much. " One of the finest 
looking men in the world," wrote the great cynic 
to Emerson. " A great shock of rough, dusky- 
dark hair ; bright, laughing hazel eyes ; massive 
aquiline face — most massive yet most delicate ; 
of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian -look- 
ing; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes 
infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic 
— fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all 



86 POETS AND PKOBLEMS. 

that may lie between; speech and speculation 
free and plenteous : I do not meet, in these last 
decades, such company over a pipe ! " A few- 
years earlier he had written of him in this wise, 
after an evening's chat : " A fine, large-featured, 
dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is 
Alfred; dusty, smoky, free-and-easy, who swims 
outwardly and inwardly with great composure in 
an inarticulate element of tranquil chaos and 
tobacco-smoke. Great now and then when he 
does emerge — a most restful, brotherly, solid- 
hearted man." When travelling in Southern 
Europe, Tennyson was taken for a Frenchman or 
an Italian, and this agrees with Bayard Taylor's 
portraiture : " He is tall and broad-shouldered 
as a son of Anak, with hair, beard, and eyes of 
southern darkness." 

Tennyson is too thoroughly sincere a man to 
give much heed to mere conventionalisms. He is 
said to wear a plain gray suit of clothes, which 
hangs loosely about him, a collar which does not 
fit well, and a carelessly adjusted necktie. He 
has the habit, so common among literary men, of 
smoking incessantly. His family have always 
been among his most ardent admirers, and he 
lives happily in his home. Manliness, noble pur- 



TENNYSON. 87 

pose, broad thought, generous sentiments, and 
liberal hopes for mankind have always charac- 
terized him. 

Tennyson's personality has given its distinctive 
quality to his poetry. Some poets write as if 
they were disembodied spirits, as if they were not 
touched by time and circumstances; but Tennyson 
is the child of his age, his country, and his own 
experiences. His autograph is written across 
each of his poems. In his case it is therefore 
more than usually interesting and suggestive that 
we know something of what he has seen and felt, 
what culture and opportunities he has had, 
where he was born and how he has lived. His 
own life and character serve as the best commen- 
•tary on his poetry. 



II. 

As a poet Tennyson has been both popular and 
great. He has almost from the first been ac- 
cepted as the greatest poet of his time. In his 
own class, among those who are masters of 
melody and artistic refinement, Tennyson stands 
with the highest. In almost the widest sense he 
has been a popular poet ; and he has been read by 
all classes and published in all forms and at all 
prices. Longfellow has appealed more fully than 
he to the heart of the world, to the common senti- 
ments and tastes; but Tennyson is a deeper and 
a truer interpreter of the aspects of nature and of 
being, he has the artist instinct and ability in a 
far higher measure, and he is more melodious and 
musical. 

Tennyson is a consummate artist in the use of 
words. The instinct for form, color, symmetry, 
and melody is very strong in him ; and the art- 

88 



TENNYSON. 89 

revival in England has found him working along 
much the same lines and towards results near of 
kin. His work in poetr}^ has had some features 
in common with that of the pre-Raphaelites in 
painting ; and he has had their love of the past in 
its most beautiful expressions. Under the influ- 
ence of Keats he has been drawn to the later 
Greek poets, and those most marked by melody 
and beauty. Many of his earlier poems are Greek 
in subject and manner, so that Carlyle said of him : 
"There he sits on a dung-heap, surrounded by in- 
numerable dead dogs." This saying does not 
prove Tennyson devoid of interest in living sub- 
jects, though it does prove Carlyle's want of 
sympathy with the artistic revival going on about 
him with such rapidity. 

The most conspicuous fact about Tennyson as 
a poet is his wonderful command of melody and 
music, and his supremely artistic command over 
the technique of poetry. His poems are great 
word-pictures, and they have that perfection and 
harmony so dear to the artistic mind. His poems 
are beautiful in structure, harmonious in form, 
and musical in expression. In melody and 
rhythm Tennyson may be said to be nearly per- 
fect. He loves to use whatever device will 



90 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

heighten the musical and artistic effect of his 
verse. He has made use of assonance, he knows 
how to employ alliteration, he has enlarged the 
number of English metres and forms of verse, he 
can make use of a discord or a change of metre 
with excellent results, and he is not devoid of 
pathos and passion when they are needed. He 
has re-introduced many old and rich-sounding 
words ; he has found delight in plain Saxon 
speech, and in the luscious joy of new-coined 
words, alike. He gives to many common words 
their old meanings, and he has a sure instinct for 
the aroma and the color of words. 

Tennyson is essentially an artist, and he paints 
pictures with words. His poetry is full of scenes 
for the painter, clearly conceived, rightly colored, 
full of life, and admirably adapted to the gratifi- 
cation of the artistic taste. He not only feels as 
the poet feels, but he sees as the artist sees. 
Many of his early poems are like a renascence 
picture gallery, wherein many artists have vied 
with each other in richness of coloring and deli- 
cacy of drawing. His poetry is delicate, sensi- 
tive, refined, even overwrought. He is like an 
artisan wdio gives more attention to polishing 
than to the strong and impressive construction of 



TENNYSON. 91 

his work. The massive repose, the impression of 
commanding power, the original rush and daring 
of genius, are often less apparent than the novel 
outline, the pretty design, and the delicate 
tracery. 

Tennyson's perfection in rhythm, melody, and 
form has not been the result of mere spontaneity. 
Swinburne writes his poems as a musician may sit 
down to a piano and pour out his feelings in 
sound, and with that intuitive sense of perfection 
in feeling and form which is impatient of revision. 
Tennyson secures his perfect results by careful 
and frequent correction. His ear for melody is 
so acute and accurate that he is not contented 
until the highest artistic perfection has been 
reached; and, at the same time, his desire for 
accuracy in thought demands the same thorough 
elaboration for the sake of what he is sajdng. All 
in all, no English poet has surpassed or even 
equalled him in the technique of the poetic art. 
He has given English poetry a flexibility and a 
range it never had before, a delicacy and perfec- 
tion, and a musical compass, which were thought 
to be quite impossible. He has carried forward 
what others had begun, following Coleridge, Shel- 
ley, Byron, and Keats ; but he has gained a mas- 



92 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

tery over the tuneful instrument of song no other 
has reached. In the way of melody and a flexi- 
ble command of words Swinburne has gone be- 
yond even Tennyson, but he sacrifices strength to 
music and thought to words in a degree too great 
to make his work effective. Tennyson is an ar- 
tist in all directions, keen of eye and ear, firm of 
hand and sound in heart, sure in instinct and per- 
fect in workmanship, singing with the lark's free- 
dom of impulse and yet he looks well to the 
manner of his song. 

There is scarcely one of Tennyson's shorter 
poems which has not undergone revision since its 
first publication, and most of his longer works 
have been vigorously corrected more than once. 
" Maud " has been subjected five times to his criti- 
cal reworking, coming from his hand a better poem 
on each occasion. The "Princess" has been sub- 
mitted to nearly as many revisions, by the addi- 
tion of the songs, by the fuller elaboration of the 
parts, by the more perfect welding of all together, 
and by the artistic development of the plot and 
purpose of the poem. His artist's eye and his 
poet's ear will leave nothing until they are satis- 
fied, until crudities are refined away, and the 
whole made living with harmony and beauty. 



TENNYSON. 93 

In conversation with a fellow-author he spoke of 

his reluctance to publish his poems until they 

were fully completed, and of the impossibility of 

correcting those which have been for many years 

before the public. He referred especially to 

" Marianna " as containing a wrong line and 

one which annoyed him. He had written : — 

The rusted nails fell from the knots 
That hold the peach to the garden-wall. 

He said this line did not describe the characteris- 
tics of the scenery he had in mind, and that the 
line should have been : — 

That held the pear to the gable-v^all. 
He has not corrected his work so assiduously 
merely for the sake of its technical perfection, 
but even more because of his love of accuracy 
in details and his purpose to describe things as 
they are. He has an exquisite sense of the fit- 
ness and the right relations of things, and an 
over-sensitive desire that what makes the scene 
before him most living and real should appear in 
his poetry. His knowledge of nature is varied 
and accurate, and his acquaintance with history 
and literature ample in its proportions. Thackeray 
once said to Bayard Taylor : " Tennyson is the 
wisest man I know." 



94 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

He does not fill his poems with information, 
and is not to be ranked with the didactic poets. 
His expressions and allusions are sometimes too 
studied, however, too careful and elaborate ; but 
his keen poetic sense will allow nothing to take 
its place in his poetry merely for the sake of in- 
formation. He carefully works out every detail 
and every image, and gives to each element of 
his verse that proportion which accords with his 
artistic apprehension. He has husbanded his 
strength for his poetic work, and lived a life 
of pure devotion to his art. He has taken no 
part in affairs, and has concerned himself with 
no other interests than those of a poet. A zeal- 
ous and steadfast worshipper of the muse he has 
ever been, and he has found in poetry the one 
aim and inspiration of his life. Almost alone 
among the English poets in this century has 
he written wholly in verse. He has not pub- 
lished in all above half a dozen pages of 
prose ; and even these have been in the form 
of brief letters on special occasions, and short 
notes to a few poems. Unconnected with his 
poetry scarcely a line of prose from his pen has - 
been given to the public. He has lived in 
and for poetry; and all his experiences and his 



TENNYSON. 95 

knowledge are made to farther its growth and 
perfection. 

So widely varied has been Tennyson's knowl- 
edge that much has been written of his indebted- 
ness to other poets and literary masters. Sted- 
man devotes a long chapter to his relations to 
Theocritus, and several pages to his resemblance 
to Pope ; and others have made elaborate at- 
tempts to trace his expressions to his predeces- 
sors. The influence of his literary tastes on his 
poetry is a marked one ; and he doubtless has car- 
ried away many an allusion and turn of thought 
from the books he has read. He is a literary 
poet, drawing his inspiration largely from "the 
storied past." It is not so much contact with 
nature which has made him a poet, as contact 
with the teeming thoughts of men, as they 
have taken form in the art products of the 
world. Only in so far as his borrowings indi- 
cate the extent to which he is a literary poet 
are they worthy of notice. Most of them are 
the results of the critics' ingenuity, rather than 
of the actual indebtedness of the poet. The right 
to read must be acceded to the poet as to other 
men, and the right to find in the past stimulating 
materials for the exercise of his poetic genius. 



96 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

This conceded, it at once appears that Tennyson 
has fully assimilated whatever he has found that 
would be of most service to him as a poet, and 
made it a living part of his poetic work. His 
own answer to the charge of indebtedness vindi- 
cates his methods against the objectors and the 
critics : — 

" I do not object to your finding parallelisms. 
They must always recur. A man (a Chinese 
scholar) some time ago wrote to me saying 
that in an unknown, untranslated Chinese poem 
there were two lines of mine, almost word for 
word. Why not? Are not human eyes all over 
the world looking at the same objects, and must 
there not consequently be coincidences of thought 
and impressions and expressions? It is scarcely 
possible for anyone to say or write anything, in 
this late time of the world, to which, in the rest 
of the literature of the world, a parallel could not 
somewhere be found. But when you say that 
this passage or that was suggested by Words- 
worth or Shelley or another, I demur, and, more, 
I wholly disagree. . . . 

"I could multiply instances, but I will not bore 
you, and far indeed am I from asserting that 
books, as well as nature, are not, and ought not 



TENNYSON. 97 

to be suggestive to the poet. I am sure that I 
myself, and many others, find a peculiar charm 
in those passages of such great masters as Vergil 
or Milton where they adopt the creation of a by- 
gone poet, and reclothe it more or less, according 
to their own fancy. But there is, I fear, a pro- 
saic set growing up among us, editors of booklets, 
bookworms, index-makers, or men of great memo- 
ries and no imagination, who impute themselves to 
the poet, and so believe that Ae, too, has no imagi- 
nation, but is forever poking his nose between 
the pages of some old volume in order to see what 
he can appropriate. They will not allow one to 
say ' King the bells,' without finding that we 
have taken it from Sir P. Sydney, or even to use 
such a simple expression as the ocean 'roars' 
without finding out the precise verse in Homer 
or Horace from which we have plagiarized it. 
(Fact !)" * 

* A Study of " The Princess." By S. E. Dawson. Second 
edition. 



III. 

Tennyson has the sentiment of beauty; the 
vision of it ever rises before him ; it subordinates 
all his other tendencies. It does no violence to 
his other gifts, but it rises above them all ; it leads 
him by an invisible bond of delightful power 
it has woven about all his being. His love of 
beauty keeps him from being rugged and sub- 
lime in his poetry, from that majestic power 
and awful penetration of the high heavens of 
reality which we behold and feel in Dante and 
in Milton. Beauty is to him an entrancement ; 
it is an Aladdin's lamp to open to his willing feet 
the realms of faery and of faith. His delight in 
beauty is no greater than his comprehension of it ; 
he feels it and he knows it with an equal satisfac- 
tion. It does not overthrow his other powers ; 
but it is in fine balance and harmony with them. 

Tennyson is not subdued by beauty, as were 
Shelley and Keats, but his whole nature glows 



TENNYSON. 99 

with it, while he keeps the even poise of his 
being under its influence. It does not intoxi- 
cate him, but it lifts him into new regions of 
capacity ; and it gives to his artistic work a com- 
pleteness not to be seen in the poetry of any 
other English poet. He luxuriates in the move- 
ment and music of verse ; it is to him an exqui- 
site delight. He is in sympathy with the ten- 
dency to decoration in art, that revels in color 
and ornament, that takes delight in beauty 
because it answers to an instinctive craving in 
man's nature. 

The poet of an artistic age, Tennyson has little 
resemblance to the poets of the classical period or 
to those of the time of revolution. Dryden 
loved classical forms and high-sounding expres- 
sions; Wordsworth found delight in the natural 
world and in what is simple; Tennyson seeks 
everywhere for what is lovely and beautiful. He 
goes not to books alone for what is polished and 
impressive ; but also for what is exquisite and 
artistic. He turns not to nature alone for what is 
sublime with the light of God's presence ; but 
also for what is transformable into pictures for 
the imagination. In a time of art-revival Tenny- 
son is the poet to make beauty real and vital to 



100 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the hearts and imaginations of men. Never be- 
fore has the English people realized the true 
worth of art or led Europe in its expression. 
That fact appears in his work as the one most 
characteristic of his poetry, as the one which 
most of all distinguishes him from his predeces- 
sors. 

In his earlier poems Tennyson seemed to be 
dilettante in feeling and method, to be merely a 
delightful singer, to lack virility and a great pur- 
pose. Then his artistic tendency was not only 
most prominent, but it seemed to be almost the 
only one to which he had given himself as a poet. 
He painted charming, even exquisite, pictures ; 
but he was a poet of the lovely, the romantic, and 
the artistic. In so far as he was not this he was 
a drawing-room poet, the poet of sweet young 
girls. The poet was there, indeed, with instru- 
ment in hand making delightful music; but the 
man did not appear who was to give soul and aim 
to the work. The soft lulling of the senses to 
repose and charmed delight, like the Indian 
summer of mellow haze and the soft blowing of 
winds, seems to prevail in most of the earlier 
poems. The dreaming ease that comes without 
eager desire or pushing thought is there, with a 



TENNYSON". 101 

tender regret that lapses us in a melancholy so 
satisfying we would never more rouse us to the 
real world again. 

In the afternoon they came into a land 
In which it seemed always afternoon. 

To that land of the " always afternoon " Tenny- 
son came in the morning of his days. Then he 
seemed to be little more than 

" The idle singer of an empty day." 

Beauty seemed to have taken him captive ; but in 
time he broke the bonds of her captivity, and he 
stood before her as a lover. It was then his true 
work as a poet began ; and it was then he made 
beauty a mistress to inspire his heart and to guide 
his imagination. 

The dilettante spirit soon disappeared from 
Tennyson. He began his poetical career at a 
time when the reaction from the revolutionary 
movement had largely spent its force, and before 
the new and nobler spirit of reform had taken 
such a character as to commend it to the poet's 
heart. When it did, Tennyson gave himself to it 
not with enthusiasm, but with something of 
earnestness ; and he became in a limited measure 
the poet of that constitutional revolution which 



102 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

has since taken place in England. He has repre- 
sented his time in its aspirations for liberty and 
in its sympathies for humanity, as well as in its 
love of the artistic. That time is not the present, 
but the period from 1830 onward for thirty years, 
during which the reform agitation, the Oxford 
movement, and the renascence of art, were such 
potent and growing influences in English thought 
and life. It differed from the revolutionary 
period by its acceptance of the constitutional 
method of reform, by its widening of suffrage and 
the political uplifting of the working class, by the 
decay of absolutism, and by the greatly increased 
extension of education. 

The overturning and rebuilding of the world 
in a day men no longer believe in ; but they have 
faith in the patient correction of faults and the 
gradual enlargement of rights. Following his 
time, Tennyson could not be a revolutionist with 
Shelley or a democrat with Burns or a hater of 
the established social order with Byron. His 
sympathies are with an extension of suffrage, the 
increase of education, an expansion of woman's 
opportunities, and an increase of power to repre- 
sentative government. We do not wish him to 
be a Burns or a Byron, a Keats or a Coleridge, 



TENNYSON. 103 

because we do not wish a return of their time or 
of the spirit which gave it life. A repetition of 
the men or the time would not be possible, or 
please us if it were. We would have Tennyson 
as he is, because he does not repeat what has gone 
before, and because he offers new hopes both for 
poetry and life. Having had Wordsworth's love 
of nature and distrust of books, and retirement 
from the busy haunts of men, and abstract studies 
into the highest things of life and truth, we 
are now glad to have Tennyson with his music 
and melody, his love of beauty and want of 
brusqueness, his culture and complacency, his 
faith in tolerance and love of tradition. He is 
the incarnate voice of cultured and refined Eng- 
land in his time. 

He accepts neither the revolutionary doctrines 
of the earlier years of the century nor the evolu- 
tionary doctrines of the present time. He be- 
lieves neither in the regenerated earth which man 
is to secure by blotting out the past, nor in the 
slow evolution of a higher society by natural 
causes. The one increasing purpose he sees in 
history is the result of the united effort of God 
and man. A better time is surely coming in the 
future, " far away, not in our time," for change is 



104 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the order in all things, change which leads to 
progress. 

The old order changeth, yieldeth place to new, 

And God fulfils himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

The time of man's redemption from misery, 
vice, and ignorance draweth nigh slowly, because 
God worketh in the world's order, now and hither- 
to and forever. 

This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs ; there is a hand that guides. 

His poems, as a whole, show one of the most 
marked tendencies of his time in a large degree. 
His has been an age of inclusion and comprehen- 
siveness, not intense and passionate, but generous 
and wide-seeing. He has written many kinds of 
verse, has been in sympathy with many forms of 
thought and life, and has taught that truth is not 
of party or sect. A lyric, a descriptive, and a dra- 
matic poet, he has drawn his inspiration alike from 
man, nature, and tradition. Most truly a lyric 
poet, he has seen in man the subject of supremest 
interest to his mind, and in sympathy with man 
he has found the deepest stirrings of his emotions. 

Tennyson is a lyric and idyllic poet, having the 
gift of song and of picturing life in its daily 



TENNYSON. 105 

aspects. His interest is in man, and in nature 
only as surrounding and reflecting him; and lie 
delights in the feelings and thoughts of men in 
all classes and times. It is not the conflicts and 
the tragedies of life he is drawn to most surely by 
his sympathies ; but the daily hopes, sorrows, and 
achievements of human beings. The simple and 
the homelike are dear to him as well as the 
romantic and the jDicturesque, though he loves 
the latter far better than the tragic and warlike. 
Even in the " Idyls of the King " it is the gentler 
and the moral side of chivalry he most delights in 
describing. He sings of the loves and the aspira- 
tions of men, their sentiments and sympathies. 
This tendency of his mind has dictated the form 
of his verse, and it has prevented his venturing far 
in the use of dramatic and epic poetry. His keen 
sense of beauty and harmony has been a sure 
hindrance to success in these directions. His 
genius works in the direction of description and 
not of representation. This is not to be re- 
gretted, for his singing has been truer to the 
aspirations and needs of the world in his time 
than if he had been a successful dramatist. As it 
is, the sentiments and emotions have found in 
him a true interpreter. 



IV. 

Tennyson's method of dealing with dramatic 
subjects may be seen in " Maud," a poem which 
has been often charged with obscurity. It is 
romantic in spirit and mono-dramatic in form, the 
speaker passing through successive stages of 
emotion and thought, in his attempts to attain 
personal fidelity to social truth in an age without 
a high ideal aim. In its latest form this poem is 
called "a monodrama," and it is divided into 
three parts, in the second of which the speaker is 
insane. The first part is marked by an artistic 
skill and perfection not surpassed in any other of 
Tennyson's poems, by a great variety and rich- 
ness of poetic music, and by depth and purity of 
sentiment. Its motive is the conflict of a refined 
and sensitive nature with the social conditions 
imposed by wealth, and the overthrow of that 
nature from the lack of some high social and 

106 



TENNYSON. 107 

moral aim inspiring his time, to which he can 
give his life with earnestness enough to overcome 
his regrets and his disappointment. The hero, if 
hero he can be called, kills the brother of Maud, 
flies to a foreign land, and becomes insane. In 
the second part he is passing through the various 
stages of his madness ; and, as he recovers, he 
learns of Maud's death through grief. In the 
third part the hero recovers, and he finds a new 
hope for his country in the war spirit rousing the 
English to undertake the breaking of the influ- 
ence of Russia. Even war is better than the 
spirit of greed, and war only can shake men out 
of their selfishness. 

And it was but a dream, yet it lighten' d my despair 
When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the 

right, 
That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease. 
The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height, 
Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionnaire : 
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace 
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note. 

It is a warlike note which the poet has struck in 
these concluding words of " Maud " ; but it means 
a love of political earnestness and jourpose rather 
than of bloodshed. That Tennyson saw in the 
commercial spirit of the time a growing disincli- 



108 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

nation for manliness, justice, and truth, this poem 
helps us realize ; and jet the main purpose of it 
is poetic and dramatic. Too much is not to be 
inferred from the words put into the mouth of the 
hero. A liberal in politics, Tennyson would not 
have liberality lead men to forget to cherish the 
highest social spirit and loyalty, such as is perpet- 
uated by the cultured and aristocratic classes. If 
democracy leads only to huckstering trade and 
the greed of money, he will have none of it. To 
be zealous and loyal Englishmen, to keep the soul 
of honor and the aim of knightly purity, to think 
of manhood and probity first of all things ; these 
are the thoughts which seem to gleam forth from 
the poetic purpose of " Maud." 

As a whole, the poem is blemished by serious 
artistic defects, by the obscurity which disfigures 
it even in its latest form, by the abrupt transitions 
from poem to poem and part to part, by a general 
looseness of structure, and by a morbid feeling 
which pervades so much of it. Perhaps more 
fully than any other of his poems "Maud" betrays 
Tennyson's incapacity for plot and structural 
creative power. He is a great and noble singer ; 
but he is not able to build a stately and symmet- 
ric edifice for his muse. His poetry is never 



TENNYSON. 109 

wanting in music and beauty; but it is beauty 
without an organic symmetry. As in "Maud," the 
parts of his poems are over-ornamented, burdened 
with what is delightful and joyous ; but the whole 
poem has not that unity, and that fit jointure of 
part to part, and that focusing of all its impres- 
sions into one grand and all-commanding effect, 
which go to make the highest work of art. 

The pictures of love in " Maud," and its songs 
of affection, its variety of metre and its richness of 
poetic form, its musical harmony and its glow 
of feeling, show Tennyson at his best. It intro- 
duces a fresh poetic style, full of sensuous beauty 
guided by a pure moral aim, adding artistic skill 
to intellectual intent. It is a plea for higher 
national aims, didactic in purpose to a limited 
extent, but most poetic and romantic in method. 

The satire which Tenn3^son introduces into 
*' Maud " is not worthy of his genius, though it 
gives variety and relief to the poem. It is sharp 
and scathing, but not so expressed as to have an 
abiding effect on those for whom it is intended. 
It seems a discordant note in his work; not be- 
cause we do not wish to see him stirred by hate 
of wrong, but because it is not relieved by that 
capacity for laughter which appears iu the great' 



110 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

est poetry. Tennyson has the gift of pathos and 
sympatliy, but not the gift of liumor. His satire 
does not make the offender Laugh at or hate 
himself. It is not broad, genial, and corrective. 
His reproofs are resented, rather than accepted 
with insight into their truthfulness. 

The beauties and the defects of "Maud'' re- 
appear in " The Princess." It has the same high 
artistic perfection, secured by many revisions 
and a keen ear for melody, joined to a similar 
ethical and reformatory purpose. " The Prin- 
cess " has been severel}^ criticised for its looseness 
of structure, and for its combination of a medi- 
aeval setting with a radical aim. Tennyson's skill 
is not to be seen in his plots, imperfectly worked 
out, but in his descriptions of nature, his insight 
and fidelity in the portrayal of character, and his 
exquisite charm of coloring. 

While " The Princess " is a plea in behalf of a 
higher social life for women, and greater justice 
for them in all their relations to men, it is far 
from being revolutionary, or even radical, in its 
attitude. Its motive is that of harmony and unity 
in human life, to be obtained by a perfect co- 
operation and a common aim on the part of man 
and woman, 



TENNYSON. Ill 

Till at the last she set herself to man 
Like perfect music unto noble words. 

It is the purpose of the poem to teach that 

The woman's cause is man's ; they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf d or godlike, bond or free. 

This solution of the problem of woman's destiny, 
though that of a poet, is the best and most 
satisfactory yet given us, so far as it goes. It is 
that of the perfect equality of the sexes, built up 
and conserved by mutual sympathy and helpful- 
ness. This is the theory of all men and women 
who are true to the facts of life and the noblest 
social ideals. "The Princess" presents a lofty 
and a noble conception of love and domestic life, 
especially in the brief songs which appear at each 
turn in the narrative. Tennyson's gift of song 
has attained its greatest height in this poem, so 
full is it of tender pathos and the music of noble 
passion. Here, too, he shows his descriptive pow- 
ers, his heroic impulse of heart, and his sympathy 
with what is genuine and generous, in full tide of 
ample expression. 



V. 

The most widely read and loved of Tennyson's 
poems is "In Memoriam " ; and it is the one 
which brings him into closer sympathy with the 
thought of his time than any other. Monotonous 
in subject and structure, it manifests variety 
and uniqueness in treatment. It seems, at first, 
to be nothing more than a series of short poems, 
following each other without order or purpose, 
and having for their general subject the death of 
a much-loved friend, and the problem of im- 
mortality. As a personal lamentation for a 
loved associate it is superior to even the simi- 
lar poems of Milton, Shelley, and Matthew 
Arnold. It is superior because more genuine 
and unstudied, and more expressive of real hu- 
man grief. It stands first in its beauty, its in- 
tensity of personal attachment, and in its lofty 
sense of the worth of friendship. Yet it is not 

112 



TENNYSON. 113 

merely a lament for Hallam or a series of short 
poems thrown carelessly together ; though far too 
much effort has been made to prove a complete 
unity of design and thought in the poem. In a 
fragmentary way the poem does indicate a system- 
atic and continuous purpose ; but there is no 
doubt that the separate poems were written 
during a period of many years, and that they 
are the genuine expressions of feeling as it took 
on new forms from time to time. To think other- 
wise is to suppose the jDoet made his grief merely 
a means of stimulating his muse to action. 

The value of " In Memoriam " lies in the fact 
that it is a natural interpretation of the grief of 
a thoughtful man, w^ho laments his friend in a 
genuine manner, and then gives utterance to his 
thoughts and feelings at each successive stage of 
his recovery from his first period of sadness and 
doubt. The criticism, that he has made merchan- 
dise of his grief, is amply deserved if the poem 
has such a unity of structure as some have dis- 
covered in it. To have written such a poem as 
these critics describe, Tennyson must have gained 
a capacity for plot and harmony of structure not 
to be found in any other of his poems. The 
significance of " In Memoriam," however, is not 



114 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

to be found in tins direction so much as in its 
genuineness of feeling, and its sincere contention 
with the doubts suggested by the death of the 
poet's friend. In all probability its parts have 
been arranged into an orderly consideration of 
the problems the poet took in hand, and there is 
in it a gradual and rational recovery from doubt 
through faith. It is not to be read as a contin- 
uous poem so much as in its separate parts, when 
they chance to fit the moods of one's own mind. 
Its praise of friendship, its glowing descriptions 
of scenery, its delight in domestic joy and con- 
fidence, its grief at the loss of a dear companion, 
its doubt and questioning about the future, its 
large dealing with the great problems of life and 
thought, its attitude of faith, and its confident 
acceptance of God and immortality, all help to 
make it Tennyson's greatest poem. 

" In Memoriam " reflects the mood and thought 
of the time as in a mirror. Its themes are the 
hio^hest which can ever exercise the mind of man. 
It has not the depth and profoundness of the 
great poems of Dante and Milton ; but our time 
is not as theirs, and Tennyson has done for us 
what the ponderous strength of their thought 
and method would have kept them from accom- 



TENNYSON. 115 

plishing. He rises through doubt to confident 
faith ; a faith resting, not on tradition and history, 
but on the evidences of God's manifestation of 
himself in nature, and on the testimony of the 
soul to its own reality and worth. 

This poem offers another testimony to the 
versatility and range of Tennyson's genius. He 
does not strike one key alone, or exhaust his 
capacity with a few chords. Always graceful, 
artistic, and imaginative, he ranges from the 
delicate claim of beauty on the poet's sensitive 
nature, through the questions of reform asking 
the attention of serious minds, on through the 
old traditions and flower-fields of the past, to the 
grandest problems of man's nature and destiny. 
Varied as has been his use of metre, he has been 
none the less so in his themes, which range from 
grave to gay, from a tender flower growing in a 
ruined wall to the nature of Him who inhabiteth 
eternity. That he has in this way lost something 
in weight and majestic power, must be said ; but 
he has gained in persuasiveness of influence and 
in the penetrative tone of his thought. He does 
not always write as if he had a mighty theme 
before him; but he does speak to the men and 
women of his generation in a manner they can 



116 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

comprehend, and which appeals earnestly to their 
feelings and hopes. 

'' In Memoriam " is a poem of actual experi- 
ences. It is an outgrowth of heart-wrestlings and 
tragedies. The doubts are those with which one 
man, at least, has contended in earnest; and the 
anguish which they wrung out of him is here im- 
printed. The theme selected itself for the poet; 
it is the cry of the poet's heart from hour to 
hour as the experiences of grief came to him. 
Here is the most open and face to face dealing 
with the problem of death which the literature of 
the time has given us. The poet has unveiled 
his heart ; and he speaks to us as one who has 
known the universal experience. One less truly 
an artist would have shaped these experiences 
into a less perfect whole ; but we must not think 
because an artist has been here, that a living 
heart did not go before him. 

This is a poem of the actual and of the present. 
There is no glamor of tradition or of the past 
upon it. It is no story retold with a new setting ; 
no myth made to live again. Whatever of merit 
it has is because it is tlie voice of a man who has 
felt and thought. He has felt the mystery of life 
and death ; he has thought to unriddle the 



TENNYSOK. 117 

problem of evil. It is because he speaks to us as 
a man and a poet that we turn to his pages for 
consolation and instruction. It is much to know 
what the man of genius and of supreme insight 
has felt, and to know that his experience has been 
as our own. 

Tennyson has shown us that his theme was 
worthy of the poet's endeavor. There is poetry 
in it as well as theology, and poetry of the 
grandest kind. The questions of man's past and 
future, the meaning of life, and the cause of all 
things that exist are not those to which the poet 
is forbidden. Tennyson has seen and transcribed 
for us that which appeals to feeling, imagination, 
and the ideal. AVhat themes could be more real, 
or have in them more of what is actual ? 

" In Memoriam " is not a didactic and theo- 
logical poem. It touches on the gravest of the 
questions with which man has to deal, but it 
pronounces no opinion on them from the point of 
view of theology. It is the human point of view 
it presents, and which it keeps to throughout. 
The theme is dealt with in a thoughtful manner 
and in the spirit of free inquiry, but the senti- 
ments on which it is based are those of universal 
human nature. It is a seeker for light who 



118 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

appears in these pages, and one who climbs the 
stairs which slope through darkness up to God. 
It is not one who has found all truth who speaks 
here, but a pilgrim with wallet in hand who sets 
forth as an apprentice for its attainment. It is a 
book of confessions of what the heart has felt and 
striven to make its own. There is so much of 
human worth and depth in it that it becomes the 
voice of many experiences and convictions. 

"In Memoriam" is a poem of sentiment more 
than of great thoughts and convictions. It does 
not probe the problem of death to the bottom, or 
give us a solution of life which is final. It is 
as a man of feeling rather than as a man of 
thought that Tennyson comes before us. We 
go to Browning for thought; we go to Tenny- 
son for sentiment. The one is keen in analysis; 
the other is profound in feeling. In this poem 
grief has laid its hand on us, and sorrow has 
taken possession of us. We know what the poet 
has felt, for we are made to feel with him. We 
are burdened with his griefs, and we are tor- 
mented with his doubts. 

A poet of sentiment, Tennyson never slips into 
sentimentalism. He keeps to a high level of pur- 
pose throughout " In Memoriam," with the aid of 



TENNYSON. 119 

serious thought and a keen conviction of the 
truth of what he utters. Tears he invites, and 
pathos he invokes ; but they are subdued and un- 
demonstrative. His sentiment is lofty and his 
passion is pure. He would have men feel deeply 
and not with wild excess. He would lead them 
to nobler sentiments and to hopes that are ideal. 
The j)athos of sympathy and affection, the senti- 
ment of heroic purpose and knightly attainment, 
and tlie feeling of trust he would bring to men as 
ever the need of their lives. It is not philosophy 
or theology or science the poet can give us, but 
sentiment and feeling and ideal motives. 

" In Memoriam" is a poem for serious and ear- 
nest minds, for those who w^ould see the world as 
it is, and yet who would walk as if in the pres- 
ence of that majesty of mystery which fills earth 
and heaven with its subtle presence. Its spirit 
cleaves to one's thought, and its temper dif- 
fuses itself through one's being. There is some- 
thing about it like a delicate perfume, or like the 
winds that gently waft themselves forward from 
unseen regions of far-off freshness. 

It is not a book of doctrines or of theological 
instruction, or even a treatise on the soul's nature 
and destiny. It is possible that too much has 



120 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

been made of its teaching, and that men have 
looked in it too often for confirmation of their 
own opinions. There is nothing in it of Pope's 
resolve to reconcile the ways of God to man, or of 
Young's exposition of the inner counsels of the 
Almighty. Tennj^son is a poet and not a phi- 
losopher ; and it is as a poet he contemplates 
the great events and problems of human exist- 
ence. "InMemoriam" touches the questions of 
faith only as these appeal to the heart and 
imagination of the poet, as they come to him 
along the way of the feelings and sympathies and 
aspirations of men. Death, and what is beyond 
it, play on every chord in his soul; and the 
music which is thus made he sings forth for the 
reconcilement and encouragement of the world. 
He sings only because the theme of life and 
death is itself a deathless song of advancing life 
and hope. 



VI. 

Tennyson has done what several English poets 
have thought of and purposed to accomplish. He 
has written a great poem on the legends of King 
Arthur. This was a favorite theme with Milton ; 
and many poems have been written on the whole 
body of the legends. Tennyson early read Mal- 
lory's prose translation, and from time to time he 
produced short poems drawn from that source. 
When at the height of his powers as a poet, 
he gave to the world four of the legends; and 
he has since slowly completed the cycle, and 
welded the parts together into the greatest 
epic poem of the century. He dealt freely 
with the legends, using those alike of Welsh 
and of English origin, refining, purifying, and 
ennobling them throughout. The coarse and 
rude he has put aside, remaking the stories in 
his own artistic manner, and shaping the whole 
to a high ideal purpose. Largely allegorical in 

121 



122 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

their nature, these legends easily gave themselves 
to a free, imaginative treatment. 

It cannot be said Tennyson has painted an 
accurate picture of the time which the legends 
represent, even though he believes that Arthur 
was a real person, and that many of the old 
narratives are based on genuine history. The 
savage strength of those times, their rough and 
rude and roistering manhood, blunt in manner 
and bloody in purpose, are not in these poems, 
as they come from Tennyson's hand. He has 
made the characters too fine, and he has given 
the scenes a quite ideal beauty ; though we can- 
not regret this when we take note of the grace 
and nobleness, the grandeur of aim and the fine- 
wrought joy of high accomplishment, the faithful- 
ness of passion to its own inclinations, and the 
truthfulness of sin to its own sure calamity, 
with which the poem abounds. 

There was but one way of giving the old legends 
a genuine poetic beauty in modern dress, and but 
one consistent with Tennyson's artistic manner; 
and that was to work in the line of the legends 
themselves, and to rej)resent Arthur as the ideal 
knight and hero. Tenuyson has made him the 
type of the heroic struggles of the soul towards 



TENNYSON. 123 

perfect purity. The higher nature in man appears 
in this poem under the allegorical guise of the 
King; and his mysterious birth, his struggles and 
adventures, as well as his mystical passing away, 
are intended to represent the conflicts of the soul 
with the corruptions and evils of the world. 
This allegorical purpose has not been wrought out 
in that perfect manner we see in the "Pilgrim's 
Progress " of Bunyan, because we lose sight of the 
fact that it is an allegory. 

It may be that an allegorical aim was not in the 
original purpose of the series of poems now 
brought together in one great work; and surely 
this aim is not distinct and assertive enough to 
bear the richest fruits which were possible to such 
a purpose. The successive poems, however, do 
picture the advancing year in its various stages of 
growth, from earliest spring to the coming winter. 
A corresponding moral progress goes on in the 
poem as a whole, from the coming of Arthur in 
the nobleness of youth, the gathering together 
of the goodly fellowship of the knights of the 
Round Table, on to the gradual encroachments 
of sin, and the setting of Arthur's life in wintry 
darkness. This allegorical aim Tennyson has 
clearly stated in his poetic address "To the 



124 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Queen," which was the dedication to one series of 

the poems, when he speaks of 

this old imperfect tale, 
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul 
Bather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost, 
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, 
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still ; or him 
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one 
Touched by the adulterous finger of a time 
That hover' d between war and wantonness 
And crownings and dethronements. 

The "Idyls of the King" are full of fascination 
and of strong poetic work. They glow and burn 
with imagination, they speak the deepest truths 
of human experience. The daintiest touches are 
on them here and there ; but anon they are 
mighty in purpose and awful in the reality of 
moral power. Passion and pathos, satire and 
moral teaching, are alike here ; but fused into a 
glowing whole with fancy and imagination, ideal 
grace and divine truth. More than elsewhere, in 
this poem he has shown his love of idealism, and 
his desire to look at the heart of things rather 
than at their surface. Truth is not all outward 
and sensuous, not all enclosed in what can be 
measured and defined. The highest and truest 
and most real of all things are those for which 
science is too shallow and crude. When truth is 



TENNYSON. 125 

sublimest, and life most perfect, imagination can 
but hint the manner of its comprehension. Here 
logic and reason do not wholly avail, for reality 
discloses itself only to the life which sees in vision 
and feels in responsive intuition. The real is not 
that which we touch and analyze, but that which 
we are, and that which calls on us with a voice 
from a star-crowned height. Let our poet be true 
to soul rather than sense, to the ideal rather than 
the actual. We were not born to be content 
with what is, but to win for humanity the " ought 
to be " which awaits us. 

Tennyson has shown in the " Idyls " his profound 
love of the ideal knighthood of purity and truth. 
They glow with a romantic passion for manly 
courtesy, a tender sympathy and reverence for 
women, and a heroic sense of fellowship with 
other men in all their true endeavors. This is no 
masquerade of imaginative or abstract personages ; 
but a procession of men who have wrought dar- 
ingly strong work as best they could, on the side 
of what is manly, and of women who have loved 
with pure ardor of heart-flame burning up through 
natures warm and gracious. As they go by it is a 
goodly company we look on, motley with virtue and 
sin, but fair to behold in their beauty and strength. 



126 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the 
" Idyls " does Tennyson reveal himself as the 
artist and as one who has great love of the idyllic 
and picturesque side of life. The life of rugged 
strength, which was that of the time of the 
Arthur legends, he does not find attractive, and 
will not accept as worthy of a place in his poem. 
In much the same way he deals in his other 
poems with the social problems of modern life. 
That in the life of to-day which looks grim and 
ugly, because of the elements in it of birth- 
struggle and of search for new paths for the soul's 
march, he cannot appreciate at its full worth. 
There is that in the past, of feeling and of 
romance, which as a poet he cannot but delight 
in. This it is in the legends of King Arthur 
which causes them to lay hold of his imagination, 
and which has led him to find in them a true 
allegory of the soul. Arthur is an unreal person 
in the " Idyls," not a being of life and blood ; and 
this element of unreality pervades the whole 
work. The poem does not conceive of life in its 
most earnest and insistent phases of expression. 
It is the work of an artist, and not the work of 
one who has probed the secret of life to its utter- 
most. 



VII. 

Texnysox undoubtedly stands at the head of 
English lyrical and idyllic poets ; and it is in his 
shorter poems of love and passion that he is to 
be seen at his best. No one of his longer poems 
stands out in conspicuous eminence, so as to take 
its place by the side of Milton's "Paradise Lost" 
or Shakespeare's "Hamlet"; but his work as a 
whole, even in the earlier and the shorter poems, 
is on a high level of beauty and genius. If his 
poetry has not the grandeur of motive, the sub- 
limity of conception, and the daring splendor of 
execution to be found in that of the great world- 
poets, the mighty masters of song, who defy the 
limits of nation, language, and creed by their 
genius, he has the plainer and simpler and more 
popular gift which makes him the i)oet of the 
daily life of his people. 

The actual England of to-day finds in Tenny- 
son, more than in any other of its poets, a genu- 

127 



128 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

ine reflection and interpretation of its being and 
thought. It is this sympathy with life as he has 
known it, in all classes of English society, which 
gives to Tennyson's poetry its genuine merit in 
no small degree. He does not act as the voice 
and interpreter of a class, as Burns did. It is 
the English people as a nation he speaks for, 
whose life is the burden of his song, and whose 
hopes guide and inspire him. England trium- 
phant by land and sea, pushing its enterprise into 
all quarters of the globe, growing in hope and 
solid comfort, becoming more refined, tasteful, and 
intelligent ; it is this England of peace, prosperity, 
and reform he has found himself in sympathy 
with, and which finds in his poetry the sentiments 
and sympathies for which it craves. 

More than Browning, Swinburne, Wordsworth, 
Byron, or Shelley is Tennyson read and admired 
by all classes of men. He does not represent a 
class, a sect in religion or art, a tendency in 
thought and sentiment, or a social type and move- 
ment. However strong his love of music and 
beauty and cultured refinement, he is not the poet 
of the artistic school. It is to Rossetti, and not to 
Tennyson, we are to look for the poet of the art- 
revival. The renascence, the Broad Church move- 



TENNYSON. 129 

ment, the advancing triumphs of science, the 
reform agitation, and the growth of the represen- 
tative principle in government, may al,! find ex- 
pression in Tennyson's poetry; but it as a lover 
of man, and as a poetic student of life in its end- 
less variety of manifestations, that he comes to us 
with his appeal to heart and mind. 

Tennyson sings of the loves and hopes and 
sorrows and burdens of men. There is pathos 
and there is tenderness in his poetry ; the passion 
and energy of a strong man, and the sympathy of 
one who loves his fellows. He delights to wander 
along the English hedge-rows and rivers, and to 
watch the ocean from sandy shore or high cliff. 
Not the less he delights in the simple duties and 
ex]3eriences and sentiments of men in cot and 
hall, city mansion or lone farmhouse. Mountain 
and brook, tiny moss in some sequestered nook, 
or bird sweeping overhead in airy mazes of move- 
ment, alike engage his thought and inspire his 
song. He sings of " Enoch Arden " and " The 
Lord of Burleigh," ^^ The Miller's Daughter," 
and the fair women of his dream, with sympathy 
for each alike ; not because of his class or rank, 
but because of his humanity and his life-experi^ 
ences. Lyric passion and freedom, idyllic peace 



130 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

and beauty, he most of all finds it in his heart to 
sing of in tender lay or stately poem. He is the 
poet of life and hope, who knows it is life and not 
death for which the men of his time are panting 
with eager aspiration. 

The poetry of Tennyson may well remind us 
that the world is always hungry for sentiment. 
There are those who are ready to sneer at what 
they call " sentimentalism " ; but it is in the re- 
gion of sentiment that most people pass the 
greater part of their lives. It is not possible for 
us all to be learned and wise. It is not possible, 
either, that we should have no other mental diet 
than common sense and reason. So long as man 
is man, so long as he is a being of feeling, will he 
love sentiment and crave for it. The poet, 
preacher, or novelist who can go to the heart is 
sure to be sought after. He will give satisfaction 
and comfort where much wiser men fail. 

Men live in their feelings, sentiments, and 
sympathies much more than in logic and reason. 
It is well that they should, for it is feeling which 
makes man's world what it is. Much as we 
believe in the hard and dry facts of life, we are 
continually crying out for what is beautiful and 
poetic in it. A great sentiment makes the whole 



TENNYSON. 131 

world kin. In it power dwells which all right 
reasoning the world has known cannot equal. 
Sentiment gives color and freshness to life, lifts it 
out of the routine and humdrum of daily toil, 
and gives to it joy and delight. 

False sentiment has the sting of evil in it. 
There is weakness and degradation in its influence. 
It entraps men for the moment, glitters for the 
hour, and is then forever forgotten. True senti- 
ment lasts as long as men feel and love. It is as 
fresh and inspiring after a thousand years as on 
the day it was first uttered. 

The poet speaks to an eternal need of the 
human soul, and because he utters the sentiments 
and feelings of the heart. It is that man who 
reflects the feelings which are universal in human 
nature, which rest on a common experience, who 
gains the suffrages of the world in all ages. He is 
not the great statesman or the great thinker, but 
the man of a great heart. He is the man who feels 
deeply and widely, and who knows the throb of 
the heart in every man about him. We love the 
man of feeling, whatever his faults. If he can give 
the world noble and pure sentiments, it will ad- 
mire him and follow wherever he may lead. It is 
a great and lofty sentiment the world ever craves. 



132 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

In a few of his poems Tennyson has shown his 
sympathy with the life of the past, a sympathy 
wholly artistic and literary. Among these are 
"JEnone," "The Lotos-Eaters," "Ulysses," "Ti- 
thonus," and a few others ; poems which indicate 
his appreciation of what was best in Greek litera- 
ture and legend. Not in any vital sense has his 
poetry been devoted to a revival of the Greek 
spirit, as may be said of so much of that of Keats 
and Matthew Arnold. In so far as he has used 
the classic legends and life has he given them 
a modern tone. The men and heroes to whom 
his muse turns have that in them which gives 

One equal temper of heroic hearts, 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

This is the modern and not the ancient temper 
of the heroic ; and it is seen in Tennyson's medi- 
seval poems as well. That he can transport him- 
self into other times, or the spirit of other times 
into his modern poetry, we have ample proof of 
in his " St. Simeon Stylites" and his " Godiva." 
This is even better shown, in its dramatic aspects, 
in "The May Queen," "The Northern Farmer," 
and " The Northern Cobbler. " Such poems as 
these indicate a capacity in Tennyson for sympa- 



TENNYSON. 133 

thy with human nature in its simplest aspects 
of joy and grief; but they are few in number. 
He is not the poet of sorrow, pain, and sin in 
the manner of Mrs. Browning. He looks at the 
joy, as she looked at the woe of life. He sings of 
rural peace and home-keeping delights, as she 
sang of the burdens which rest on the weak and 
ignorant. It is a beggar-maid crowned by a king 
we find in Tennyson's poetry ; it is the cry of the 
hungry and orphaned children we find in Mrs. 
Browning's. 

Most characteristic of Tennyson are his shorter 
poems of love. In " The Miller's Daughter," 
" Dora," " Edwin Morris," " Enoch Arden, " Ayl- 
mer's Field," and " Sea Dreams" we see him, not 
at his best, but in a manner most of all necessary 
to the knowing of him as a poet. In these 
poems are to be discovered the foundation ele- 
ments of his genius. /They are lyrics of daily 
life; not crude and homely, but simple, lovely, 
and refined. Even in "The May Queen" life is 
picturesque and beautiful. The rude, coarse, 
and brutal are put aside, as if they did not 
exist. It is not an earth without sin on which 
Tennyson lives, but it is one whereon men have 
learned the decencies and the dignities of life. 



134 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

To these more simple and idyllic poems the great 
body of Tennyson's readers will come, because 
they are noble and hopeful, and because they 
strike the keynote of how many experiences! 

More distinctly than any other Tennyson has 
been the patriotic poet of England in his time. 
His "Charge of the Light Brigade,'* "Ode to 
Wellington,'^ "The Third of February, 1852," 
and other patriotic poems, tell how ardent his 
sympathy with English institutions and ideas. 
The triumphs of his countrymen by him have 
been sung in a manner to satisfy the national 
zeal of the most enthusiastic. At times even he 
can speak with a voice of terrible meaning in 
rebuke and in scorn of the tyrant's sway. The 
English hate of the Buonapartes and their meth- 
ods has been his own. 

We love not this French God, the child of Hell, 
Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise ; 

But though we love kind Peace so well, 
We dare not ev'n by silence sanction lies. 

It might be safe our censure to withdraw ; 
And yet, my Lords, not well : there is a higher law. 

Battle for the right, and in the name of a more 
righteous obedience to the higher law, Tennyson 
has been ready to praise and to make glorious by 
his song. When roused by some great deed, or 



TENNYSON. 135 

when fired by hatred of some giant wrong, he 
has made his verse like the tramp of armies and 
the sound of many cannon. A lover of peace, a 
righteous cause appeals to all that is manly and 
heroic in his nature. 

Tennyson may be regarded as an idyllic rather 
than a lyrical poet. He is the poet of a time 
of profound peace. In " Locksley Hall " and in 
"Maud" he is full of energy and passion, and 
the lyric quality of his mind manifests itself 
with spirit and force. It is not his habit, how- 
ever, to give unrestrained play to sentiment and 
passion, to the tragedy and stormy conflict of the 
emotions. On the other hand, he is not a poet 
of reflection only, and of a merely intellectual 
interpretation of life. He combines the two in 
a very effective manner, adding to his contempla- 
tive habit of mind a rare wealth of sentiment and 
emotion. It is the peaceful life of his own time 
he has surcharged with feeling, as in "Maud" 
"In Memoriam," "The Princess," "Locksley 
Hall," "Enoch Arden," and many of his 
shorter poems. 

Into the region of the rofiiantic he has ven- 
tured, in the "Idyls of the King," "The Prin- 
cess," and some of his shorter pieces. There he 



136 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

shows himself capable of feeling and passion, but 
they are held in check and guided to ends 
acceptable to the poet's artistic and intellec- 
tual cast of thought. More of passion and of 
tragic insight would have made these poems 
greater and nobler. They are now open to the 
charge of being sometimes tame and unheroic. If 
they had a little more of vigor, stern purpose, 
and the courage of high resolve, they would be 
more worthy of our love and the poet's genius. 

When we seek the chief characteristic of 
Tennyson we find it in his lines, — 

'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
More life and fuller that we want. 

Not theories, not creeds, not forms of govern- 
ment, has he sought as a man and a poet; but 
to realize life in some larger and diviner fashion, 
and to make it one with all that is beautiful, true, 
and good. He is the poet of manly joy, and of a 
vigorous sense of the worth of life. It is life on 
earth and among men he delights in ; its senti- 
ments, aspirations, and affections are those which 
win the suffrages of his thought. The life of this 
present time he would make greater in thought, 
fresher in spirit, nobler in aim ; and he would 
bring to it the motives of an ideal faith in 



TENNYSON. 137 

humanity. Man, in all the round of his human 
experiences, is the theme of his verse ; a theme 
often handled on the level of each day's most 
urgent need for hope, courage, and love. Life 
is to him full of infinite riches ; and of these he 
he has gathered such as he felt would best serve 
the ends of his own being and the good of the 
world. 



VIII. 

It was well that Tennyson should change the 
direction of his poetic expression with the coming 
of age. A change in manner gives freshness and 
a new incentive ; at least, they keep the poet 
from the evils of repetition and stagnation. The 
necessity of coping with new conditions leads to 
a fresh putting forth of power, and to the using 
of other capacities than those hitherto employed. 
A long continued use of any one method of ex- 
pression generates careless habits and a want of 
fresh purpose. The pleasure of novelty comes 
with the use of new poetic forms, and the mind 
is stimulated by the unaccustomed conditions 
under which it is employed. 

Before the writing of " Queen Mary " Tenny- 
son had not made use of the drama. Some trace 
of dramatic capacity his poetry had shown, and a 
few of his more attentive critics had predicted 

138 



TENNYSON. 139 

that lie would in time turn to this method of 
expression. In "Maud," "Locksley Hall," and 
other poems, he had made effective use of the 
monodrama, but always as a means of unfolding 
character. Depicting the moods of an individual 
is very different from exhibiting the conflicts 
which grow out of the social and political life of 
man. There was in "Maud" so evident a lack 
of unity and harmonious development of purpose, 
that it did not give promise of a high order of 
dramatic talent in the author. In "The Idyls 
of the King " there is the same defect and limi- 
tation. The several poems have many exquisite 
beauties of scenery, character, and story-telling; 
but they are wanting in concentration of aim, and 
in the power of making a single definite impres- 
sion. They move on in a manner large, loose, and 
languid; spreading over wide tracts of waste land, 
instead of being confined to a single definite 
channel, where the waters rush forward swift and 
strong. 

Tennyson's dramatic poems have not been 
received with general favor. They have been 
a disappointment to his admirers, and they have, 
as yet, added little to his poetic fame. They 
make it manifest that by nature he is not a 



140 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

dramatic poet. They lack unity and harmony of 
structure. The story told has no focal point, 
where it is brought to a powerful and effective 
culmination. His dramatic works are pictorial 
historic studies, and not true dramas. He has 
followed Plutarch, Boccaccio, Froude, and Free- 
man far too closely, not transforming his mate- 
rials in the alembic of his own genius. " Harold," 
" Queen Mary," and " Becket," are too much in 
the nature of chronicle plays or dramatic repro- 
ductions of history. 

There are fine passages in the dramas, dainty 
touches too many, wise studies of character quite 
enough. In fact, Tennyson is too much the poet 
of refinement and exquisite taste for the produc- 
tion of genuine dramatic work. He has not the 
strength, the power of grasping tragic conditions, 
and the intense sympathy with the struggles and 
conflicts of men, necessary to the production of 
genuine dramas. The conflict which makes a 
true drama, the clashing of antagonistic natures 
and social conditions, is wanting in each of his 
works of this kind. 

Tennyson is not a true dramatic poet, because 
he has the limitations of his day and generation. 
The drama demands a time of conflict and of 



TENNYSON. 141 

mental concentration. Introspection, and a keen 
interest in the personal unfolclment of character, 
are unfavorable to its production. Tennyson 
belongs to a time which considers the individual 
in his relations to God, and as a self-willing soul. 
That temper of mind is fatal to the drama. The 
dramatic element in life comes of man's being the 
victim of conditions he cannot control, the puppet 
of mighty physical and social forces. ^Eschylus, 
Calderon, Shakspere were believers in fate, the 
supreme will of God, and the inevitable destiny 
of social conditions. Tennyson's belief in law is 
not helpful to him as a dramatic poet. It is the 
blind and smiting enmity of gods or nature, un- 
thinking and hateful, not to be predicted or 
avoided, in which the tragic element of the 
greatest dramas is to be found. If the causes of 
conflict were not the same to Shakspere as to 
iEschylus, they were sufficiently fateful and por- 
tentous to both. Shakspere lived in a time 
which pressed home on his mind a clear concep- 
tion of the conflicts of nation with nation, social 
order with social order, man with nature and 
humanity with the Eternal Fact of things. To 
Tennyson no such experience of the struggle of 
will with force has ever come. It is the beauty. 



142 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the delight, and the harmony of life which he has 
seen and felt most deeply ; and in these there is 
nothing tragic or dramatic. His eyes are turned 
towards the gains of man through the long cen- 
turies of his effort, as they now appear perfected 
and glorified in the higher civilization of the race. 

He is a romantic and not a dramatic poet. It 
is as the interpreter of history he appears in his 
dramatic works, as one keenly sensitive to what 
there is in it beautiful and picturesque. He looks 
not to the struggle of civilization with civiliza- 
tion, and of powerful minds with adverse condi- 
tions of nature and society; but to what is 
romantic, spectacular, and of panoramic beauty. 
The clash of fate, the dire inevitableness of pre- 
destined destruction, are in none of his dramas. 
He is too much an optimist to see that life re- 
veals them. 

That which has made Tennyson a romantic and 
idyllic poet unfits him for the writing of trage- 
dies. His genius is too dainty and too refined for 
the rude force and concentrated might of the 
drama. He cares too much for verbal felicities 
and delicacy of expression. His imagination is a 
charming maiden of high degree, and not the 
robust dame who meets the world face to face. 



TENNYSON. 143 

All this fits him to be a romantic poet, to enter 
into what is finest and noblest in past ages, and to 
make it live again before us in its beauty and its 
romance. He is the poet of tournaments, and of 
fair ladies attended by their knights ; but not the 
poet of battle and of kingdoms lost and won. 
He is a troubadour, and not a master-singer. 
Ladies' bowers await him, and not the council- 
chambers of kings. He follows in the train of 
the lyric and not of the tragic muse. He has 
only borrowed the mask of the tragedian for a 
moment, to see if it will fit him at all. That he 
has kept it beyond the moment may have been 
only because there were none worthy to whom it 
might be returned. To him the mask does not 
belong, however motley the followers of the muse 
now may be. 



IX. 

Tennyson has not been a believer in art for 
art's sake, or he would not have been so great a 
poet as he is. A master of the poetic art in its 
highest reaches and capacities, he has not been 
contented with mere beauty of form ; but he has 
wedded thought to form and virtue to beauty. 
He has given the strength of moral purpose and 
the excellence of wisdom to his poetry. Thus is 
his art redeemed from weakness, and his poetry 
made more genuinely beautiful. The greatest 
master of the poetic art in England during his time, 
with a supreme love of beauty and artistic perfec- 
tion, he has not given his whole mind and heart 
to this one tendency. Nowhere has he violated 
the moral sanctities in his singing, or cast a slur 
on what is pure and good. A moral aim has 
made itself apparent in his poetry ; of such a kind 
as to show that he recognizes the unity of the 
144 



TENNYSON. 145 

human faculties, and that no one of them can be 
divorced from the others, even in art. Beauty 
goes with righteousness, rather than apart from 
it. The poet gains nothing by passion and lust 
and a free rein to the senses. A violated human 
nature, either in the direction of excess or asceti- 
cism, is never beautiful. Tennyson has well 
proven to us that art may go hand in hand with 
conscience and moral health. 

More completely than any other poet of his 
time he has hit the true mean between the 
methods of the artist and the moralist. He sings 
for the pure love of song, he delights in beauty 
for its own sake ; and yet he ever keeps clearly 
before him, in all his more elaborate work, the 
moral purpose which pervades nature and life 
throughout. Life is lovely and moral at one and 
the same time ; and nature is no more intent on 
beauty than on ethical fidelity. There is a purity 
of beauty as much as there is a beauty of holiness. 
This Tennyson has seen with a wise comprehen- 
siveness, unifying the two spheres of art and 
morals, so that the old divorce between them has 
resulted in wedded affection and mutual joy. 

It is evident that Tennyson has not made it a 
special purpose to teach morality; but he has 



146 POETS AND PROBLEMS . 

tlirougliout his work recognized the value of the 
moral aim and motive. In such poems as " The 
Lotos-Eaters," " The Palace of Art," » Godiva," 
and " The Idyls of the King," there is a distinct 
moral element, of great importance to the appre- 
hension of his art. Not teaching any formal and 
didactic precepts, he gives to his poetry a moral 
tone. Its influence may not be of that strenuous 
and insistent kind which the highest purity and 
manhood demand ; but it never disguises lust and 
evil passion under the name of beauty or art. 

In " The Palace of Art " Tennyson showed how 
fully he recognized, at the beginning of his 
career as a poet, the failure of art when pursued 
without a moral and an altruistic purpose. The 
lordly pleasure-house brought only evil and moral 
corruption to the selfish seeker for personal 
enjoyment. Phantasms and nightmares pursued 
the soul wrapped wholly in her own love of 
beauty and artistic pleasure. The lesson con- 
veyed in this poem is one of profound importance ; 
and it may be taken as Tennyson's declaration of 
faith on the subject of art. The soul wholly 
intent on the artistic interpretation of life is made 
to realize that life is other than beauty and its 
enjoyment. 



TENNYSON. 147 

Lest she should fail and perish utterly, 

God, before whom ever lie bare 
The abysmal deeps of Personality, 

Plagued her with sore despair. 

When she would think, where'er she tum'd her sight 

The airy hand confusion wrought, 
Wrote, "Mene, mene," and divided quite 

The kingdom of her thought. 

Deep dread and loathing of her solitude 
Fell on her, from which mood was bom 

Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood 
Laughter at her self-scorn. 

The problem of life pressed on the soul, and 
she grew more and more to feel the need of 
human sympathy and communion. Though awake 
to this need, she refused to come out into the light. 
This state of the positive acceptance of beauty, 
when the moral nature had been partially aroused, 
is described in words robust and earnest : — 

Back on herself her serpent pride had curl'd. 

" No voice," she shriek' d in that lone hall, 
" No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world: 

One deep, deep silence all!" 

She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, 

InwTapt tenfold in slothful shame, 
Lay there exiled from eternal God, 

Lost to her place and name ; 

And death and life she hated equally, 

And nothing saw, for her despair. 
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity, 

No comfort any^vhere; 



148 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

Remaining utterly confused with fears, 
And ever worse "with growing time, 

And ever unrelieved witii dismal tears, \3~^ y 
And all alone in crime ; 

Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round 

With blackness as a solid -wall, 
Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound 

Of human footsteps fall. 

But the soul at last sees her sins, comes out 
among men, and finds the communion with them 
through which alone can art be made noble and 
life joyous. 

So when four years were wholly finished, 

She threw her royal robes away. 
"Make me a cottage in the vale," she eried, Acyy-d-, 

" Where I may mourn and pray. 

" Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are 

So lightly, beautifully built : 
Perchance I may return with others there 

When I have purged my guilt! " 

In "■ The Vision of Sin " the poet shows the 
degradation which comes of submission to sense 
and pleasure. The poet is here represented as a 
youth riding a horse with wings; but he seeks 
the palace of pleasure, and is led in by the child 
of sin. At the last, he comes to be a gray and 
gap-toothed old man, whose sin has overcome him, 
and whose end is full of bitterness. Above his 



TENNYSO^Sr. 149 

sin and his degradation God waits as a moral 
judgment and a vision of eternal righteousness. 

I saw that every morning, far withdrawn 
Beyond the darkness and the cataract, 
God made himself an awful rose of dawn, 
Unheeded. 

It is impossible to divorce beauty from that with 
which it is connected; and we must always under- 
stand it in its relations to that which it helps to 
interpret. Nor is it possible to separate the effect 
of beauty on man from the other elements of the 
impression which the world makes on him. He is 
a thinkiDg and feeling being ; not a congeries of 
faculties, each of which may act independently of 
the others. It is impossible for him to direct any 
one of his faculties to any one order of objective 
facts, and not to have either confused by that 
which surrounds it. Man's faculty for beauty 
will get complicated with what reason or con- 
science may have to say on the same subject. In 
the same way, it is impossible to comprehend the 
beauty of an object apart from its history, its 
science, its general environment, and its applica- 
tions to the other needs of man. It is, therefore, 
not to be suj)posed that cesthetic truth is to be 
attained without regard to anything else. The 



150 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

very attempt to find in art something complete in 
itself is an outrage on truth and beauty alike. It 
is an emasculated mind which gives sanction to 
such an attempt; a mind in which every other 
gift with which man is endowed is in some degree 
repressed. 

True art is the outgrowth of the totality of 
man's being, concentrated, for the time of its 
production, on the sentiment and faculty of 
beauty. The greater the man, the fuller and the 
more perfect his range of being, the worthier and 
the truer will be his art. As an outgrowth of the 
activity of the whole man, art must bear the 
impression of man's nature from its lowest to its 
highest quality and capacity. Under the guid- 
ance of the aesthetic faculties, it must bear the 
stamp of reason, conscience, and affection ; if it 
does not, it is imperfect, and in some degree 
unworthy. Those forms of art which show only 
a passion for beauty, with a studied effort at the 
repression of everything else, are inevitably weak 
in power and debilitating in their effect on the 
mind. 

Tennyson has an artistic mind ; tlie aesthetic 
side of life constantly appeals to him. Yet he 
has not divorced beauty from truth and right. 



TENNYSON. 151 

He has lived as a man, not merely as an artist. 
It is the Avhole man Avhich speaks in his poetry, 
cultured in all his faculties and capacities. It is a 
living soul that meets us on his pages, who has 
thought and felt and wrestled with evil in a way 
to touch the needs and experiences of all, as he 
presents to us what life has taught him of its 
deepest secrets. The poet should be capable of 
interpreting the whole of life, from the side of 
emotion and imagination. This Tennyson has 
done in a manner to attract all classes of men in 
their varied experiences. Some love his charming 
pictures of simple and homely life ; others delight 
in his artistic interpretaiions oLthe- past ; and yet 
others are drawn to him for his thoughtful deal- 
ings with the great problems of being. A few 
comprehend the balance and amplitude of his 
nature, as shown in the richness and variety and 
wholeness of his work. 

Supremely an artist, Tennyson fully realizes 
that beauty cannot be divorced from duty. The 
sesthetic man is also quite as much a moral man, 
if he does no violence to his nature. Imagination 
need not quarrel with conscience, much less put 
it in prison. Not in any sense a didactic poet, 
Tennyson has inculcated many a moral lesson in 



152 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

his poetry. Through all his poetry a strong and 
earnest moral purpose is to be seen expressing 
itself. It is never intrusive, it never subverts 
the art; but there it is with its sublime attitude 
of conviction. The poet may realize, as others 
do, that the world is founded in what is right, 
and that there is something noble in being on its 
side against wrong. This attitude of confidence 
in the moral order and rectitude of the world 
Tennyson always takes; and it gives a profound 
meaning and beauty to his poetry. It gives to 
the artist's work ampler proportions, a more 
perfect harmony, and a strong leading voice to 
the music of his singing. ^ 



X. 

A supiie:mely artistic love of beauty, combined 
with a rare philosophic depth of thought, charac- 
terizes Tennyson as a poet. His art is not to be 
studied apart from his thought. The true poet 
has much to teach; and we value his work in 
proportion to his ability to understand and inter- 
pret life and nature. If insight and intuition 
are wanting, if there is not present a thoughtful 
look at the great mysteries of human existence, 
poetry of the highest kind cannot be produced. 
As Dante spoke the largest and wisest thought of 
his time, and may be taken as a symbol of its 
spirit and aspirations, and Goethe of his, so may 
Tennyson be regarded as in some smaller measure 
the voice of his age in its deepest and truest 
spirit. 

In his philosophic and religious tendencies 
Tennyson represents the idealistic movement, 
begun in Germany in the eighteenth century, in 
153 



154 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

its later and English phases. He is not very near 
to Kant, Hegel, or Coleridge ; but he shows close 
affinity with men who learned what they taught 
of Coleridge and his German predecessors. He 
teaches idealism as tempered by science ; but he 
does not accept science in its later and more 
agnostic phases. He has much to say of law and 
progress, but always with an idealistic interpre- 
tation. When he sings, at the end of "In 
Memoriam," of 



One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 
To wliieh the whole creation moves, 



V 



he is not thinking of an evolution such as that 
described by Darwin and Spencer, but of one 
arising from a spiritual cause and a directive 
purpose. In "Locksley Hall" he presents the 
idealistic theory of development, caused by God's 
immanence in nature and humanity, not the 
scientific theory of evolution by natural selection 
and other physical causes. This, evolution is 
slowly going forward to-day in every phase of 
nature and life, for God is continually at work in 
the natural and moral order of the world. 

Tennyson finds great satisfaction in the idea of 
progress, and it enters as an element into many 



TENNYSON. 155 

of his poems. "Locksley Hall" gives it a most 
perfect interpretation ; but it is in " The Prin- 
cess," " The Golden Year," " The Two Voices," 
and, in its negative form, in " The Vision of Sin." 
Growth under the conditions of law, Tennyson 
sees everywhere ; and the progress that will in 
the remote future make real that which the poet 
now sees in the ideal. The slowness of this 
advancement of the world is a kind of Nemesis 
in some of his poems. He expects no radical 
overturning of the world, such as Shelley 
believed in^ and to ardent natures this snail- 
pace of progress is a cause of chafing and sad- 
ness. Tennyson is contented with the slow 
advance which comes of growth through condi- 
tions of law, because his mind rests satisfied with 
the law itself as the basis of human good. To 
him the modern conception of law has become 
familiar, and the miraculous has ceased to be 
satisfactory. 

Tennyson is an idealist in the trend of his 
thought, but he is a realist in the accuracy of 
his descriptive instinct. He sees not only the 
outward forms of things, but their inner life. 
Beauty delights him ; and the soul's vision con- 
soles him. He beholds beauty as transfused with 



156 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

a spiritual meaning. It is not of the senses and 
the surface of things alone, but one with their 
higher meaning and spirit. Because nature and 
life are transfused with God, and his advancing 
life, beauty exists. 

Perhaps Tennyson's idealism is to be seen 
nowhere so clearly as in his thoughts about 
God. In one of the finest of his short poems 
he has given an admirable summary of the ideal- 
istic conception of the immanence of God in all 
things that are, even in a flower growing in the 
cranny of a wall. This theory is, that God is 
intimately present in every thing and in every 
life. The same thought, of God as the force, 
law, life, and mind in all things, is to be seen in 
the poem entitled " The Higher Pantheism" ; 
which is, in fact, a true presentation of the 
teaching of idealism. 

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns ? 

Man can see only the outward, material fact ; but 
if he could comprehend the real meaning of this 
vision nature spreads out before him, he would 
find that it brings God before him in reality. 

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; 
But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He? 



TENNYSON. 157 

He does not see in God an arbitrary Being, 
who works through supernatural agencies; but 
a Being of transcendent purpose and will, who 
accomplishes his results through law and order. 
He works in nature, not by its subversion. . He 
teaches by progress, not by miracle. In this con- 
ception of God, in his relations to humanity, law 
plays an important part. Tennyson does not 
regard law as an arbitrary dominion of force 
over matter or as an order in the succession of 
phenomena; but as the constant activities of the 
Infinite God, as he expresses himself through 
the world which he sustains by his own life and 
being. God is the life that throbs 

Thro' all this changing world of changeless law. 

In two of his later poems Tennyson has 

attempted to give voice to his conception of 

the spiritual order which God has made within 

the material, and of which he is the life and 

light. Man comes, he says. 

From that true world within the world we see, 
Whereof our world is but the bounding shore. 

In "The Human Cry" he has given the same 
thought a higher expression, though the po- 
etry stumbles and fails with the largeness of 
the thought to be uttered. 



158 POETS AND PKOBLEMS. 

We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in Thee; 
We feel we are something — that also has come from Thee; 
We know we are nothing — but Thou wilt help us to be. 

Idealism could not find better words with which 
to express its thought of the relations of man to 
God. Nor could it well find truer words for its 
utterance of the spiritual conception of God 
which it entertains than the phrases of the 
same poem. 

Infinite Ideality! 
Immeasurable Eeality! 
Infinite Personality! 

Tennyson is far from being a pantheist, how- 
ever, as may be easily discovered in some of his 
other poems. Decisively indicative of the tem- 
per and direction of his mind is the introduc- 
tory poem of "In Memoriam": — 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 
Thou madest life in man and brute : 

Thou seemest human and- divine 
The highest, holiest manhood, thou. 

He has many times made use of phrases which 
would indicate his distinct acceptance of the 
doctrine of the personality of God. No pan- 
theist could make use of words so explicit as 
these : — 



TENNYSON. 159 

Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside ; 
And I shall know him when we meet. 

The relations of man to God are grandly con- 
ceived when, in the same poem, he uses words 
assertive of his faith in immortality. The per- 
sonality of God and man's immortality are cog- 
X^~ nate beliefs, and are mutually sustained. The 
two stand or fall together, and they affirm each 
other with a force which no logic can break. 
When we state the one we necessarily state the 
other, for they are as the two sides of the same 
shield. If God is a personal being, pure, just, and 
good, the immortality of man follows as daylight 
the rising of the sun. It is on this ground that 
Tennyson rests his own faith; and he could not 
take that which is stronger or more positive. 

Thou will not leave us in the dust : 
Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just. 

Again and again does the poet declare how 
futile and unworthy is our life if man is not 
immortal. He says life is as futile as it is frail, 
if it is to end with the body. This conviction he 
has expressed with great energy in the thirty- 
fourth poem of " In Memoriam " : — 



160 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

My own dim life should teach me this, 

That life shall live forevermore, 

Else earth is darkness at the core, 
And dust and ashes all that is ; 

This round of green, this orb of flame, 

Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks 

In some wild poet, when he works 
Without a conscience or an aim. 

Wliat then were God to such as I ? 

'Twere hardly worth my while to choose 

Of things all mortal, or to use 
A little patience ere I die ; 

'Twere best at once to sink to peace, 
Like birds the charming serpent draws. 
To drop head-foremost in the jaws 

Of vacant darkness, and to cease. 

No words could be more emphatic than these of 
the poet's mood, or more clearly indicative of his 
belief that immortality is essential to the thought 
of God and a rational interpretation of the uni- 
verse. That life and nature lose their grandest 
meaning without the conception of man as a 
being in whom immortality inheres, there can 
be no doubt, though George Eliot believed that 
such a belief is not necessary to the noblest and 
purest living. Tennyson places himself on the 
side of the universal instincts of man as a moral 
being; and he insists that the universe must 



TENNYSON. 161 

have a rational solution, a solution not to be 
had in the largest sense apart from the immor- 
tality of man. It is not selfishness which causes 
the purest and most as^Diring souls to entertain 
this belief; but the conviction that the universe 
rests on an eternal basis of truth and goodness. 

If tlie wages of virtue be dust, 
"Would she liave heart to endure for the Hfe of the worm 

and the fly ? 
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, 
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky : 
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die. 

On many of the great subjects of thought and 
speculation which have most exercised the minds 
of men during the last fifty years Tennyson has 
uttered the most graceful and pregnant words of 
wisdom. Many of the finest and most expressive 
sayings which embody the ideas and ideals of the 
time, and which have passed into proverbial use 
have come from him. The preacher, the orator, 
and the writer find frequent occasion for quoting 
his words, because they seem to say so completely 
and impressively what many people are thinking. 

Tennyson's religious ideas are marked by large- 
ness and vagueness, a comprehensive spirit, and a 
slight tendency to mysticism. He shows breadth 
and generous sentiment, a great love of humanity, 



162 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

and an acceptance of all nature as pervaded with 

the divine. Doctrines have little value for him ; 

they are but the transitory receptacles of thought. 

The tendency of the age to look upon all creeds 

as but temporary and imperfect has found its 

fittest expression in the proem of "In Memo- 

riam" : — 

Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be. 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than ^hey. 

Our creeds have their passing day ; but they are 
only broken lights of Him who does not change. 
Even doubt which is honest may be a help 
towards the truth ; and it may be worthier than 
the faith which is narrow and exclusive. 

Tennyson's religion is tolerant, inclusive as 
goodness, generous as sunlight. It does not rest 
on tradition, history, or authority; but on the 
worth of the soul, the boundless love of God, and 
the testimony of spiritual things to their own 
greatness. He is a spiritual agnostic, insisting 
that we are not to learn of the eternal mysteries 
through the understanding or by the way of 
physical demonstration. To the spiritual in man 
they appear as true in themselves, being their 
own evidence and assurance. Not demonstration, 



TENNYSOK. 163 

but faith, is the guide that leads surely on to 

those realms which lie beyond the way of sense 

and evidence : — 

"We have but faith: we cannot know; 
For knowledge is of things we see ; 
And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness; let it grow. ^^„.,----'-~" 

It is not the faith resting solely on historic 
evidence which Tennyson here insists on as the 
ground of religious truth, but that which comes 
of intuition and a free exercise of mind and heart. 
It is the soul's assertion of its own worth and of 
the validity of that evidence which nature offers 
as to the existence of God. 

The effect of that progressive movement in the 
church with which Tennyson has been in sympa- 
thy, was to banish dogma and the spirit which 
gave it life. It was not done by saying that 
there is no truth sure and substantial, but 
through a sympathetic recognition of the diver- 
gence of human opinions. The aim of religion 
pure and undefiled is not to secure uniformity of 
belief. Such a faith can only be reached ' by 
compulsion, which in itself must be detrimental 
to all that is best and sweetest in religion. , 

It must also be recognized that all human state- 
ments of truth are imperfect. Even that truth 



164 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

which God has revealed is received by men who 
interpret it according to their capacity. It was 
the conclusion of the Broad Churchmen, therefore, 
that charity and toleration are worth more than 
uniformity of faith. They aimed to give men 
pure hearts rather than perfect truths. Their aim 
was to develop men in the spirit of the Gospel, 
rather than to build up a church. 

With these aims and convictions Tennyson has 
been thoroughly in sympathy. He is not in any 
sense a dogmatist ; but the essence of Christianity 
inheres in his poetry. It has vitalized his thought 
and broadened his sympathies. Christ is to him 
the infinite spirit of love. The cMirch is for him 
an institution whose one aim is the development 
of the spirit and the reality of faith. He refuses 
to believe that there is any statement of belief 
the acceptance of which is essential to the true 
spirit of vital religion. When he says, " We have 
but faith," he is in no sense inclined to refuse to 
man the possibility of knowledge. He is not an 
agnostic. Faith is of the heart and the soul ; it is 
a feeling and a conviction. It is the antithesis of 
dogma and not of knowledge. Faith itself is a 
knowledge of the most assured and assuring 
kind; and so it is that Tennyson presents it. 



TENNYSON. 165 

Truth may be known by our being absorbed into 
it, as well as by seeing it from the outside. It is 
by breathing its atmosphere and living its life 
that we really come to know it in the deepest and 
truest sense. While it remains in the intellect it 
is but a formula of logic. It must diffuse itself 
into every faculty and fibre of the mind before we 
can know it in a sense worthy of the name of 
knowledge. Such knowledge it is which Tenny- 
son knows by the name of faith. 

If we have but faith, it is no uncertain guide. 
It is a motive, an impulse, and an inspiration men 
need, and not a creed. Faith is the man who 
journeys with eager eyes and expectant hope 
towards a great city ; dogma is the man who sits 
down by a dismantled and crumbling palace, con- 
vinced that there is all. Faith is crowned of life ; 
dogma is enamored of death. Faith is a youth 
with eyes turned sunward ; dogma is an old man, 
discouraged and dishonored. In the religion of 
faith is the hope of the world, that brightens the 
path of man and gives a higher lift to his thought. 

Faith, toleration, helpfulness are the words of 
the Broad Church. They announce a purpose 
and a spirit in religion, and not a finality. The 
one spiritual end of religion is communion with 



166 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

God; its one practical outcome is the service of 
man. Outside of this there is little to gain and 
much to lose. So it is the Broad Churchman 
goes to the heart of the whole matter, and seeks 
for what is real. The reality is faith, the seeing 
of the soul. Having faith we need no more. 

It is not to be forgotten that faith is another 
name for experience. It is what has been experi- 
enced within, for faith is not the acceptance of 
truth on the testimony of history or tradition. 
Faith is the soul's vision of what belongs to its 
own nature. It is the demonstration which 
comes of spiritual experience. 

It is with large realities, and not with petty 
notions, that religion should deal. Everywhere 
this is Tennyson's idea, and one that he makes 
worthy of the approval of broad-minded men. 
Religion is a thing of life and bloom and fruitage. 
It should touch and consecrate men at the hearth- 
side, and it should set their eyes on things pure 
and true in all the business of the world. It is 
a faith to inspire us. It is a spirit of love to 
realize in the daily life of the world, and it is 
an ideal that descends uj^on us like a glory and 
an enchantment. Such religion ever is in the 
poetry of Tennyson. 



TENNYSON. 167 

Every poet who is to do strong and true and 
helpful work must place himself in sympathy with 
the life and the aspirations of his time. He must 
feel that the tendencies about him are in some 
degree right, that they are leading the world in 
the direction in which it ought to go. He must 
rejoice in its hopes and its ideals, and he must 
find no joy higher than that of becoming a living 
voice to utter its sentiments. Not merely to 
follow but to lead, and to lead towards what is of 
human worth and of inspiring excellence, should 
be his aim. Tennyson accepts the questioning 
spirit of his time so far as it doubts the old creeds 
in their cruder teachings ; but he sees underneath 
the stumbling words and the broken affirmations 
a truth sublime and substantial, and to this he 
ever holds. Science he knows in its large and 
truth-seeking spirit ; but its mockery and its 
spirit of destruction he will not heed. He looks 
patiently into all which modern thought has to 
say about man, his origin and destiny ; but he 
will not accept the materialistic conclusions with 
which so many are fascinated. To him the soul is 
its own witness, its own defence. The struggle 
of existence, the transformations of force, do not 
appeal to him : — 



168 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

I think we are not wholly brain, 
Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain, 
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death. 
> 

Too vague, perhaps, is the form Tennyson gives 
to his faith ; but it is the vagueness of one who 
will not claim to know what he does not know. 
He does not rest his faith on the authority which 
gives an assured answer to every question which 
may be asked of the soul and the universe. 

In such a faith as this, with all its vagueness, 
there is something grand and comforting. It has 
in it elements of strength as, well as of weakness, 
and especially the strength which comes of perfect 
candor and honesty in dealing with the highest 
questions of life. It is not the faith of perfect 
trust, but of manly courage and a charity tolerant 
as life itself. It looks toward the future with 
eyes clear-seeing and a face betokening hope. No 
fear is in the heart of him who looks, but confi- 
dence and earnest resolve. 



Tennyson is an original thinker, according to 
the manner of the poet. He has a creative mind ; 
and he has invented new poetic methods. There 
is a charm about his poetry not to be found in that 



\ 



TENNYSON. 169 

of any other English poet; and he has given to 
our hmguage new beauties and capacities. There 
is a freshness of creative insight in his work, that 
raises it to the highest levels of lyrical expression. 
He has intuition, imagination, artistic method, and 
charm of expression, in a remarkable degree. 

In his personal life, in his family relations, in 
the company of his friends, and in his relations to 
royalty, in his attitude towards his time and in 
his sympathy with it, Tennyson is the ideal poet. 
There is something fine, large, and excellent in 
his relations to the English public, and in his 
attitude toward the great reading world which he 
has addressed through his poetry. No vices or 
defects have marred his life, no word of reproach 
can be uttered against him as to his moral and 
social conduct. His life has been consistent 
throughout, and in harmony with itself. The 
dreams of his youth have been fulfilled in old age. 
He has not outgrown or rejected the ideals of his 
early manhood. He has, in the largest sense, 
been true to himself, and done what it was in him 
to accomplish. 



III. 

RUSK IN. 



The beautiful is as useful as the practical, perhaps more so. — Victor 
JIufjo. 

I VENERATE him as one of the great teachers of the day. The grand 
doctrines of truth and sincerity in art, and the nobleness and solemnity 
of our human life, which he teaches with the inspiration of a Hebrew 
prophet, must be stirring up young minds in a promising way. The two 
last volumes of "Modern Painters " contain, I think, some of the finest 
writing of the age. He is strongly akin to the sublimest part of Words- 
worth. — George Eliot. 

He is a great writer, as Rousseau was, — fresh, eloquent, audacious, 
writing out of the fulness of the present mood, and heedless how far the 
impulse of to-day may contravene that of yesterday. But as Rousseau 
was always faithful to his idea of truth, so Ruskin is always faithful to 
nature. When all his errors and paradoxes and coi.tradictions shall 
have been utterly forgotten, this will remain to his praise. No man 
since Wordsworth's brightest days did half so much to teach his country- 
men and those who speak his language, how to appreciate that silent 
nature " which never did betray the heart that loved her." — McCarthy. 

He has created a new literature, —that of art, — and all the subjects 
related to it; and the work he has done has more genius and is more 
original than any other prose work of our time. — Stopford Brooke. 

I WAS much touched with what you say of Ruskin. Anything which 
makes him' doubt his own infallibility will, I am sure, do him good. He 
is earnest, I am convinced, and will come quite right. — Maurice. 

What a little way, I thought, has all Ruskin's fire and eloquence made 
in driving into people so great a truth, a truth so fertile of consequences. 
— William Morris. 



m. 

RIJSKIK 

One of the most characteristic intellectual signs 
of the times in England is the growth of interest 
in art. It is a popular movement, reaching to 
all classes in society, and expressing itself in 
every possible form. Love of beauty has be- 
come a passion and a pursuit. The sesthetic 
side of life has received an attention it never 
before commanded in England. The serious tem- 
per of the English people has hitherto kept them 
from that popular appreciation of art which has 
always existed in Italy and France. The puritan 
spirit, so long a dominant one, lias looked on art 
as unworthy of men who have a serious purpose 
and who would give life a moral intent. 

At the roots of the new growth of aesthetic 
interest is a changed conception of human nature. 
So long as the natural in man was looked on as 
vile and corrupt, as unworthy and debased, so 

173 



174 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

long art could not thrive. Through the aid of 
the French Revolution, German idealism, and 
other causes, and especially through a revival 
of the Greek spirit in thought and in literature, 
it has been seen that a rational aim in life is 
the true one. This changed temper of men's 
thoughts about life and its purpose has wrought 
a silent menial and moral revolution. It has 
given men a new conception of beauty and pleas- 
ure, and a higher interest in man as an individual 
being. All that is of a normal use of the world 
has come to be appreciated at a far higher value 
than before. Pleasure has ceased to be a sin ; 
and beauty is no longer an allurement of evil. 
This changed attitude of thought has left men 
free to appreciate the claims of nature, and to 
rejoice in all that is natural, healthy, and free. 

Somewdiat of the Greek spirit has come back to 
men with the growth of modern thought. Where 
the mediseval spirit rejected all that is not other- 
worldly, the modern man finds in what is natural 
and rational the true law and test for the guid- 
ance of human life. The modern world rises to a 
higher point of view than either the Greek or the 
mediaeval, for it combines the objectivity of the 
one with the subjectivity of the other, in a 



RUSKIN. 175 

true synthesis. An idealism which keeps itself 
healthy through an intimate sympathy with 
nature is the characteristic feature of modern 
thought. As a result, modern art turns to nature 
as the expression of a subjective life of great 
beauty and richness, manifested through its 
forms, colors, and changing aspects. Life is 
now appreciated for what it is in itself ; and 
men find joy in whatever comes out of the natu- 
ral exercise of its functions. 

For art, the growth of naturalism has been a 
great gain. It has led to an appreciation of those 
objects, and to a development of those feelings, 
which awaken an artistic temper and motive. 
The Greek love of the human form has not 
returned, and cannot return ; but with the 
development of naturalism there has come a 
sympathetic appreciation of whatever grows out 
of human experience. Nothing that is human is 
alien to me, may be taken as the spirit of modern 
art, alike in painting, poetry, and fiction. 

The tendency to naturalism in art is repre- 
sented in England by Turner and by Words- 
worth. With both, the object of art was to 
effect a reconciliation between man and nature, 
by showing that in nature a like spirit to that in 



176 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

man finds its abode. They led men away from 
classic art to commune with that which they 
found about them in the world of man and 
nature, with the view of describing accurately 
and minutely the impression made on them by 
this communion. Here was the inspiration for 
a new style of art, that should bring men back 
again into vital relations with the cosmos. It 
gave an immediate impulse to the development 
of art in all its forms. Men found a new delight 
in beauty, and a fresh satisfaction in contact with 
the natural world. 

A tendency the opposite of naturalism has also 
helped to create the art revival. This is the 
revival of interest in the past ; in part the result 
of scientific speculations, but more largel}', so far 
as art is concerned, the legitimate product of the 
Oxford movement. This movement bade men 
look to primitive Christianity for a true expres- 
sion of the religious life to which they aspired ; 
and it found in the mediaeval church an embodi- 
ment of what Christ taught. Its whole spirit was 
conducive to the growth of art, as it turned the 
attention of men to those times when art was inti- 
mately allied with the Christian consciousness. 
Art was then a symbolic method of expressing 



EUSKIN. 177 

the subjective life and aspiration of the soul. 
A new interest was awakened in Christian art as 
the result of the Oxford movement. Its great 
works were eagerly studied ; and a revival of 
interest in Gothic art at once followed. 

That wonderful expression of the human spirit 
which had been given in mediaeval art again took 
captive the hearts of men, and it was seen how 
much of what goes on in the soul of man had 
there been interpreted in a manner full of noble 
purpose. The cry of the soul for purity and 
peace, the longing of men to escape from sin, 
and the vision which comes to them of a spirit- 
ual world environing and interpenetrating the 
material, all found interpretation in the art of 
that time. 

Antagonistic as naturalism and mediae valism 
seemed to be, they soon blended with each other 
to produce the art revival of the present time. 
How that was effected may be seen in the work 
of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, the third agent 
in creating the new art interest. The first law 
laid down by this fraternity of artists was that 
nature is to be the only guide in art. Their 
movement was a revolt against the classic spirit, 
which had prevailed in English art up to their 



178 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

time. They rejected rule and conventionality, 
and they went to nature as humble and faithful 
students of her forms and colors of beauty. 
They believed in the exact reproduction of 
nature, in minute and detailed imitation of her 
aspects and scenes. They were soon affected, 
however, by the revival of interest in the past, 
and with the spirit which the Oxford movement 
had created. They carried the same faithfulness 
to fact into their studies of the past as into their 
studies of nature ; and they strenuously main- 
tained that art should be faithful to the time 
and the people it interprets. 

A few of the pre-Raphaelites remained faithful 
to the first purpose of their attack on convention- 
ality ; and they have been true successors to 
Turner. A much larger number have been 
affected by medisevalism, and have made art the 
symbolic interpretation of the soul's struggles and 
aspirations. They have given an impulse to the 
art revival, given it a character and purpose ; 
but they have departed a long way from the 
purpose and spirit which first brought them 
together. It is not the naturalism of Rossetti's 
painting or poetry which now impresses the 
student of his work, but its quaintness and its 



RUSKIN. 179 

symbolism. Detailed reproduction of nature gave 
way with him to a desire to interpret the inner 
life of man, through the aid of a symbolism based 
on that of the mediseval church, but employed in 
a manner his own. 

The outcome of these tendencies was a vast 
increase of interest in art. Many other causes 
conspired towards the same result and helped 
men to find a meaning in the beautiful which 
their fathers had not found there. It may be 
doubtful if art has as yet taken a deep hold upon 
the popular mind in England, and whether there 
is a universal appreciation of the best which art 
can produce. Love of bric-a-brac and the cheaply 
beautiful there is quite enough ; but for art as an 
interpretation of life in a great and lofty spirit 
there is only as yet a faint appreciation. For the 
creation of great works of art, and their joyous 
acceptance by the people, England is not yet 
ready. There is no such spirit abroad as that 
which was manifest in the Gothic period of art 
production. Cities do not now vie with each other 
in the building of cathedrals and minsters or in 
the eager patronage of any other form of art. 

With the broadening life of the modern world 
there can no longer be a concentration of the best 



180 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

thoughts and aspirations of a people on one 
form of spiritual or artistic expression. Yet the 
middle of the nineteenth century in England will 
be marked as that of an era of what is popular in 
art, and of an interest which manifests itself in a 
zealous study of art in all its forms. The history 
of art, the purpose of art, have awakened an 
unbounded curiosity. Men have been fascinated 
by the beautiful. Love of the beautiful and 
sublime in nature has risen into a passion. The 
picturesque finds everywhere its admirers. Com- 
munion with nature has become necessary to the 
life of the time. Much of it is but shallow and 
heartless ; but it marks the change from the 
drawing-rooms and the clipped gardens of the 
eighteenth century. Not the less does it mark 
a change from the revolutionary spirit of the age 
of Coleridge and Wordsworth. 

The present tendencies in English art and 
literature are in part a continuation of those 
manifested in Turner and Wordsworth ; but they 
have been modified by other and not less potent 
influences. In poetry, Keats is a leader now 
even more truly than Wordsworth, though the 
poetry of the present time fuses the spirit of 
these two men into one. Love of nature remains; 



RUSKIN. 181 

but the artistic touch and instinct of Keats are 
the more potent. This is to be seen in the poetry 
of Tennyson, who loves nature with a true and 
tender love, but not in the manner of Words- 
worth. The intimate sympathy and communion 
which the older poet had with nature has not 
been attained by the younger. To Tennyson 
nature is a means of awakening the poetic 
impulse, rather than a guide and a friend. It is 
that in nature which makes it a source of art 
material which causes it to be attractive to him. 

The art impulse of the Victorian era is to be 
seen in its poetry in a marked degree. It appears 
in a desire for greater poetic perfection in form, 
in the subjection of nature to a treatment sjmon- u^yrtCc 
ymous with that of the painter, and in giving 
poetic treatment to subjects connected with the 
history and development of art. The poetry of 
Tennyson shows throughout his sympathy with 
the artistic revival of his time ; and from him the 
poetry of the era has taken its direction and its ■ 
spirit. In Swinburne and Morris the art impulse 
also finds an emphatic expression, in their doc- 
trine that the poetic art creates its own motives 
and is its own justification. In his treatment of 
art themes Browning has shown how intently 



182 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the poets may now give themselves to an inter- 
pretation of this form of the soul's activity. 

Wordsworth felt that his mission was that of a 
teacher; Tennyson regards his as that of an artist. 
Whatever the poet may now have to teach, he 
holds it to be subordinate to the production of 
artistic pleasure. He feels that he is a disciple of 
beauty, or its mouthpiece and interpreter. In 
artistic motives he believes poetry originates; 
and in the creation of artistic impressions he 
maintains that poetry ends. This is the temper 
of the poetry of the present time, and this the 
general spirit which it manifests. There are 
notable exceptions, as in the case of Browning; 
but even the exceptions show to what an extent 
the poetry of the age is dominated by the artistic 
impulse. Art for art's sake has become the word 
which interprets the tendency of the time, in 
poetry and in painting alike. It is a resolute 
word of rebuke to those who see in art only a 
dallying with what is of little moment ; and it is 
an insistent word in behalf of the high mission 
of art to the soul of man. It is too exclusive 
and limited in its interpretation ; but it gives 
to the art movement a distinct and emphatic 
meaning. 



i 



I 



RUSKIN. ' 183 

In the history of the art revival in England 
the name of one man will appear as among the 
greatest of the causes leading to it. The greatest 
of art critics, John Ruskin has taught the English 
the serious meaning of art, and in what manner 
it may contribute to the elevation and advance- 
ment of the noblest human interests. His love of 
art, his keen appeciation of what is best in it, the 
serious tone of his realism and his moral teaching, 
and the wonderful eloquence of his advocacy of 
the claims of art, have all helped to gain for him 
an attentive ear for what he has had to say in its 
behalf. Never before did art have such a cham- 
pion as he has been. He has helped to form and 
to direct the art movement of his time. It would 
have come without his aid, as it has in other 
countries ; but it would not have spread so widely 
or gained so strong a hold on the best English 
thought. His is the one name which represents 
the art movement, and is synonymous with all it 
has expressed. He could have gained the hearing 
he has in no other country than England, and it 
is English art for which he speaks. Sympathetic 
as he is with art in all its forms and schools, his 
is the serious temper of a true Englishman, who 
will not be content with art for its own sake. 



184 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

The puritan spirit remains in his belief that the 
best art always joins itself to a healthy moral aim. 

Whatever is best and whatever is weakest in 
the art revival is reproduced in Ruskin. The one 
definite aim with him has been that of finding in j 
art whatever it has to teach the men of his time. ^n.. 
He does not belong to one school or concentrate 
his thought into a definite system. In his teach- 
ing, art joins itself to every other form of human 
activity. It finds in religion, morals, science, and 
political life aids to its expression, and truths 
which it helps to interpret. In the same way, the 
art revival has been many-sided, and it has been 
sympathetic with art of every school and time. 
It has not that intense concentration of aim which 
appears in the periods of great creative activity. 
As Ruskin has been an art critic, and not a crea- 
tor of art, so the art revival has been one of his- 
toric study more truly than of original production. 

In the writings of John Ruskin art has become 
intimately associated with the poetic study of 
nature and with the noblest literary expression. 
As never before in England, art has become a 
literary theme of the first importance. A priest 
of humanity has made art and literature one to 
the peoples who use the English tongue. 



I. 

Under the guidance of his father, Ruskin early 
manifested his intense love of nature and art. 
Every summer his farther was in the habit of 
driving in a chaise through a greater part of 
England, taking orders for his business house in 
London. With him often journeyed his wife and 
son ; and they stopped wherever they pleased, to 
admire the beautiful scener}^ Whenever a col- 
lection of pictures was heard of, that was visited, 
and whatever noble architecture they passed near. 
Ruskin had a passionate love of nature in his 
boyhood, which his father gave him an oppor- 
tunity of gratifying, but which he could not have 
created. His power of comprehending nature 
was as instinctive as Mozart's capacity for music, 
which made him a composer at the age of four, 
and the despair of his masters only a few years 
later. Genius is not the result of contact with 

).85 



186 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

other minds, the product of education, or the out- 
growth of favorable conditions. When it appears 
it never hesitates to see and to understand what 
belongs to it, and it conies to its own as if they 
two had never been apart. It is such a passion 
for the beauties of nature which Ruskin possessed 
in youth, for he says : " Whenever they brought 
me near hills, and in all mountain ground and 
scenery, I had a pleasure, as early as I can 
remember, and continuing until I was eighteen 
or twenty, infinitely greater than any which has 
been since possible to me in anything, comparable 
for intensity only to the joy of a lover in being 
near a noble and kind mistress, but no more 
expircable or definable than love itself." In this 
wise genius acts whenever a masterful soul comes 
into the world, making him see the meaning of 
life and nature as easily as a young bird builds 
its nest. 

Having no playmates, and being almost entirely 
shut out from childish amusements, Ruskin was 
thus early led to manifest his delight in the 
things of nature, revelling in the joy which they 
gave him. As he walked by the crags on the 
Derwentwater, and looked through the dark 
roots into the waters of the lake, he was filled 



EUSKIN. 187 

with "intense joy, mingled with awe." On a 
frosty morning, as he passed through one of the 
mountain glens, he beheld the rocks hung with 
icicles ; and this scene he has described in a poem 
written when he was nine years old. It gives 
prophecy of the man that was to be, manifesting 
even then the wonderful power which Ruskin 
has always possessed, of seeing nature in its 
inmost secret meanings. 

His instinct and passion for art came to manifest 
themselves almost as early as his love of nature. 
These, too, were brought to their expression by the 
tastes of his father. "My father," he says, "had 
a quite infallible natural judgment in joainting; 
and though it had never been cultivated so as to 
enable him to understand the Italian schools, his 
sense of the power of the northern masters was 
as true and jjassionate as that of the most accom- 
plished artist. He never, when I was old enough 
to care for what he himself delighted in, allowed 
me to look at a bad picture." And this father's 
care over the tender son bore the richest fruitage, 
adding to his instinct for beauty the cultivated 
taste which saved him from error ; and it devel- 
oped in him the critic's keenest capacity for 
knowing what is best, and for putting upon it 



188 POEIS AND PROBLEMS. 

the mark of his approval. His love of art, as 
thus early given to seek what would perfectly 
satisfy itself, did not lead to the artist's creative 
power. He tried to become an artist, gave many 
years to the attempt; but there was some gift of 
touch, or some creative outreach of thought, 
which was wanting. 

Not the less helpful to Ruskin was the influ- 
ence of his mother, to whom he owed his literary 
training, his impulse towards moral excellence, 
and his strong religious inclinations. She gave 
him the Bible and the best of the English classics 
for his daily reading, and he absorbed from them 
what was most nutritious to the intellect, and 
what fed the moral earnestness of his nature. 
She made religion a flame of light to him, guiding 
his steps in the way of spiritual conviction and 
vision of soul. If his love of nature and beauty 
was great, in its earliest manifestations, not the 
less emphatically was he drawn towards that 
inward realm where the higher nature discloses 
other attractions as fascinating and as real. His 
love for the moral and spiritual was a master pas- 
sion as ardent as that which guided him to art 
and to beauty of nature, so that he could never 
look upon the one without being confident the 



RUSKTN. 189 

other was inwoven with whatever it is or can 
become. 

Ruskin's youth was all that could have been 
desired, promising much for him in the years that 
lay before him. In his home, in the guidance of 
his parents, through the training he received, in 
the impulses which awakened his genius to 
accomplishment, there Avas the assurance that 
his work would be good and the direction of it 
noble. That his earliest intellectual tendencies 
did not continue, and that he did not become 
artist or poet, is not a matter for surprise ; for 
youth makes many experiments before it comes to 
that form of activity in which the man can work 
with the hio'hest degfree of success. He wrote 
many verses before his thirtieth year, and he 
wrote none after that time. That he is a poet 
these verses show us, for they reveal a fine wealth 
of imagination, a mind impelled by the ricliest 
tides of thought, and a heart warm with sympa- 
thy and emotion. Yet they do not give the high- 
est promise of poetic power in the way of form 
and expression. His prose of the same period is 
more poetic than his verse, and mainly because 
verse acted as a clog to the free working of his 
mind. In his sweeping, on-rushing, and expan- 



190 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

sive prose he is poetic and imaginative in a 
delightful manner ; but the limits and necessi- 
ties of verse do not give full swing to the bound- 
less activity and range of his thought. 

Ruskin went to Oxford in 1833, when the fer- 
ment of thought there was at its highest, when 
the religious life of England seemed about to 
be transformed with the ancient ardors of the 
Church, by a brave-souled band of men there 
teaching and praying. He went to Oxford from 
his mother's teaching one of the most ardent and 
convinced of evangelicals ; and from that teach- 
ing no influence of Newman or any other had the 
power to sway him. Yet he was touched in some 
degree by the backward-looking hopes of that 
movement, and he caught something of its in- 
tense conviction concerning the dealings of God 
with men in those ages more simple and devout 
than our own. His criticisms of the materialism 
and selfishness of the present age are only to be 
understood in the light of his belief that the ages 
of an absorbing religious interest were better and 
nobler than those given to invention and science. 
In these university days, and under the same 
influence, he also learned to look upon art as a 
test of a nation's life, and to believe that it most 



KUSKIN. 191 

truly flourishes in an age when men are confident 
of the presence and companionship of God. Tak- 
ing no interest in the ruder sports of his compan- 
ions at the university, he gave himself to study 
and to those pursuits which had already proved 
to him so attractive. 

At the age of twenty-four Ruskin began his 
literary career, by the publication of the first vol- 
ume of his " Modern Painters." It was devoted 
to a vindication of the works of Turner from 
what he chose to regard as neglect and adverse 
criticism. It has the ardor and enthusiasm of 
youth stamped on its every page, and the zealous 
purpose to defend what he believed to be great 
and noble. Literature presents no finer instance 
of the chivalric defence of another's merits, or a 
purer spirit of devotion to another's genius. It 
was full of fresh insight, a high moral courage, 
and an intense enthusiasm for the beauty of 
nature. It struck out a new course of thought 
in sesthetics, gave to beauty an importance in 
the whole range of life it will retain hereafter, 
gave to nature an interpretation of the highest 
and richest kind, and brought sentiment to as 
fine an expression in literature as it has ever 
known. 



192 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Ruskin began his literary career as the de- 
fender of a great painter ; but he went on as 
the champion of many true and beautiful causes, 
keeping the knightly temper of his first onset 
against the false and the ugly. An earnest stu- 
dent, a jealous lover of truth, he has been devoted 
to his calling with a singular oneness of aim and 
purity of intent. He has written many books, 
spoken many lectures, been the leader of a great 
art revival in England through his influence as 
the lecturer on art at Oxford, and done much to 
interpret morals and religion in a spirit of the 
highest truth and lo3^alty. One of the great 
prose writers of his time, Ruskin has helped to 
widen the love of the beautiful, and to unite it 
in the closest relations to all the truest interests 
of life. He has been to his generation a teacher 
and a prophet, clear of eye and pure of heart. 

Ruskin is small in person, careless in dress, and 
nervous in manner. He has been described as 
having a spare, stooping figure, a rough-hewn, 
kindly face, a mobile, sensitive mouth, clear, deep 
eyes, sweet and honest in repose, earnest and elo- 
quent in debate. An account of him given by 
one who visited him in his own house at Den- 
mark Hill, says that he was emotional and 



RUSKIN. 193 

nervous, and his voice, though rich and sweet, 
had a tendency to sink into a plaintive and hope- 
less tone. His large, light eye was soft and 
genial, and his mouth was thin and severe. The 
brow was prominent, and the chin was receding. 
Crabb Robinson met him at a literary gathering, 
and described him as the most interesting person 
present, as talking well, and looking better, and 
as having a very delicate and a most gentlemanly 
countenance and manner. When he was a young 
man he met Miss Mitford, who said that he was 
very eloquent and distinguished looking, tall, fair, 
and slender, with a gentle playfulness, and a sort 
of pretty w^aywardness that was quite charming. 
Sydney Dobell met him in 1852, and made a fine 
pen-portrait of the great artist-critic : " The 
characteristics of his mouth and eyes are a 
susceptible, almost tremulous, appreciation that 
comes and goes about a shrewd acumen that is 
permanent ; and an earnestness that pervades 
every feature, gives power to a face that would 
otherwise be merely lovable for its gentleness. 
His manner is very much an expression of all 
this." The man is not in these outward features, 
but they in some slight degree serve to make him 
known to us. Those who have known him do 



194 POETS AND PKOBLEMS. 

not give us the same report of his person ; but 
the man is in his 430oks, because his mind and 
his heart are there. Few authors have put them- 
selves more completely into their writings than 
Ruskin has done. His own personal history and 
opinions, his manner of life, the inmost soul of 
the man, are revealed to the attentive reader of 
his books, as in the case of almost no other 
author. He is sympathetic and confidential, 
touched with egotism, and always open and re- 
sponsive to whatever influences life may bring 
to him. 

Ruskin has the strong and insistent personality 
of genius, and he will not dress, live, or think in 
the manner of other men. He has given little 
heed to the conventional beliefs of his time in art, 
morals, or religion, preferring to follow his own 
convictions of truth and duty. His personality is 
impressed on his every word and act, and stands 
forth as a magnetic and commanding presence 
above all his work of every kind. In " Fors Cla- 
vigera" he has described his own life and his 
own purposes in that racy and magnetic style 
which he knows so well how to use when roused 
by indignation or contempt. " Because," he 
says, " I have passed my life in alms-giving, 



RUSKm. 195 

not in fortune-hunting ; because I have labored 
always for the honor of others, not my own, and 
have chosen rather to make men look to Turner 
and Luini, than to form or exhibit the skill of my 
own hand ; because I have lowered my rents and 
assured the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, 
instead of taking from them all I could force for 
the roofs they needed; because I love a wood 
walk better than a London street, and would 
rather watch a sea-gull fly than shoot it, and 
rather hear a thrush sing than eat it; finally, 
because I never disobeyed my mother, and be- 
cause I have honored all women with solemn 
worship, and have been kind even to the unkind 
and evil; therefore the hacks of English art and 
literature wag their heads at me, and the poor 
wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul 
daily for a bottle of sour wine and a cigar talks of 
the effeminate sentimentality of Ruskin.'' 



II. 

RUSKIN is one of the most beautiful of English 
prose writers. There is a magic touch and im- 
press to his style, so easy and clear is it, while it 
is sonorous and musical, ornate and eloquent. It 
charms by its very richness and its ease, as it 
comes pouring forth from a full and noble nature. 
If Tennyson has given new capacity and variety 
to English poetry, Ruskin has done no less for 
English prose. His style is stately in form, the 
diction is rich with beauty and magnificence, and 
the purpose is always lofty and pure. He writes 
as one who gives his whole heart to what he says, 
who pours his words forth in a flood, with majes- 
tic intensity and the splendor of power. He has 
the gift of graceful utterance, so that every 
sentence is rounded and complete, happy in form, 
and instinct with charm. He has passion and 
energy, exuberance of nature and of words, a 

196 



EUSKIN. 197 

sensitive appreciation of beauty and purity alike, 
and a magnificent imagination. No English 
author is more eloquent than he, or more capable 
of sustained flights of impassioned, magnetic, and 
po^yerful writing. Others may have a greater 
capacity for producing a deep and mighty effect, 
but no one adds this quality to his charm of style, 
his wealth of imagination, and his ability to draw 
the reader into the magnetic influence of his 
thought. His books are not like a flower garden, 
wherein we are impressed with the color and the 
variety of beauty, arranged with a pleasing effect ; 
but a great park, where all is stately and impres- 
sive, delicate and delightful, with the naturalness 
of nature herself. There are no mere ornaments, 
no petty decorations, in his writing; only the 
majesty, and the sweep, and the glory of nature 
and the loftiest themes. 

A free and a strong imagination Ruskin has, 
that would have made him a great poet had he 
possessed the other qualities necessary. Its 
sweep 'is too wide and commanding for poetry, 
and only finds its fit expression in his eloquent 
and majestic prose. Cramped by the exigencies 
of poetry, he finds adequate outlet for his nature 
in the prose of liis flowing and impassioned 



198 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

descriptions of nature, and in his appeals for 
human obligation and obedience. 

His mind is too discursive for poetry, too impet- 
uous and unrestrained. He rushes eagerly on 
when he has a thought to utter, with little order 
and system, careless of logical sequence if he 
can but give his ideas and his emotions full ex- 
pression. He lacks concentration, logical power, 
and philosophic insight. His is the prose of 
emotion and imagination, more than of logic and 
reason. There is no continuity, no system, no 
orderly unfolding of a distinct purpose, in his 
'' Modern Painters " ; and the same is true in a 
large measure of all his writings. He often loses 
in power by the use of too many words ; and he 
does not adequately impress his thought on the 
world, because of his failure to give it a logical 
and a compact statement. Whatever comes to 
his mind at any moment he turns aside to, how- 
ever irrelevant it may be. Especially in his 
lectures is the reader annoyed with his habit of 
wandering far and wide. His style has lost in 
charm in his later writings, though it has gained 
in ease and familiarity. 

Keenly sensitive, tenderly sympathetic, and 
highly impressionable Ruskin is in every touch 



EUSKIK. 199 

and throb of his nature. Exquisitely and deli- 
cately appreciative of the presence of beauty or 
of ugliness, he is easily thrown out of balance 
and made to feel that his mag^netic relations with 
nature and life are broken. His writings vibrate 
with nervous flexibility and keenness of sensibility. 
Every change in nature he feels; his environment 
gives the joy or grief of the day ; what does not 
harmonize with his nature repels him and jars upon 
him. His writings everywhere show this mag- 
netic and responsive character of his thought, for 
he utters the word and the impression of the 
hour. 

Ruskin writes what he thinks and feels at the 
moment, unmindful of what he has said before. 
His books are the outpourings of his heart, the 
fresh and free-spoken thoughts of an open and 
responsive nature. He conceals nothing, he ex- 
cuses nothing ; all is given to the reader in con- 
fidence and freedom. When we read his books 
we feel that we are meeting him face to face, that 
he is sitting by our side and freely conversing 
with us. 

Ruskin is the prose interpreter of the poetical 
and artistic side of life. We do not live by logic, 
but by feeling and sympathy. Life is joy, beauty, 



200 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

and harmony with nature. The tramp of armies, 
the rush of the steam-car, the whirl of machinery, 
are not in his books; for he hates them alL It 
is quiet, peace, virtue, manliness, he delights in, 
and which inspire his pages. To live healthily, to 
love faithfully, to act truly, is what he preaches. 
He is the prophet of beaut}^ ; and by beauty he 
means harmony, health, and wholeness. It is 
sympathy of man and nature, responsive to and 
accordant with each other. 

Fortunate the generation which has such a man 
for its teacher. His faults are nothing, soon for- 
gotten. His genius is primary, life-giving, with 
power of inspiration. He delights us with the 
charm and sensitiveness of words ; he reveals to 
us the world-wide beauty whichjies around ; he 
opens to us the fountains of joy and melody in 
the heart ; he kindles on the altar of humanity 
the passion-flames of love and sympathy. When 
we truly know him he is no more the author and 
the critic ; he becomes a guide, a friend, and a 
beloved companion. He so takes us home to his 
heart that we can but make him our own bosom 
companion and confidant. What author so much 
like a brother ! 



III. 

Imaghstatiox with Ruskin is not the organ of 
fiction but of truth, the friend and helpmate of 
every faculty in man, the pioneer and guide in 
every search for a larger comprehension of the 
world. It has given him Wordsworth's capacity 
for seeing nature instinct with the Divine Life, 
and for beholding in it a spiritual beauty and 
power sublime and wonderful. It has made him 
one of the greatest of the describers of the natural 
world. New beauties and new meanings have 
been revealed to him as existing in all its forms 
and expressions. His minute observation, his 
powerful imagination, his intuition of beauty 
and harmony, and his ability to make others 
feel that what he describes really exists, have 
made him a wonderful interpreter of nature. 
His descriptions of cloud, sea, and mountain 
scenery show him at his best as an observer 

201 



202 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

and writer. He describes what he has seen with 
fidelity, but not in its bare details or in its mere 
outward phenomena. He penetrates through the 
facts of nature to their meanings for the artist 
and the lover of beauty, seeing what others pass 
by without waiting to behold. He seems to be 
in league with nature, and she yields up to him 
her secrets, showing him her most beautiful as- 
pects, as a maid to her lover. He has a sympa- 
thetic eye for her charms, he watches her in a 
wide variety of her manifestations, and his imagi- 
nation is instinctively sure in its penetration of 
her meanings. He has given to nature a spirit- 
ual meaning similar to that which was presented 
by Wordsworth; but his knowledge of her indi- 
vidual forms in sky and sea, leaf and bird, has 
been greater in range and more instinctively 
true in its penetration of her secret meanings. 

As the interpreter of nature Ruskin is the 
equal of Rousseau as the interpreter of human 
sentiment, and he has produced a similar change 
in the common oj)inions of men. What is simple 
and natural in man found in Rousseau an exposi- 
tor who has reached all intelligent persons with 
the extraordinary influence of his thought. He 
produced a revolution by his teachings, and 



RUSKLN. 203 

helped to restore to man the ability to accept 
the natural worth of his own being. All which 
he taught was not wise, and he did not himself 
realize the full meaning of his own teachings. 
He often went wilfully astray ; but he gave an 
impulse in the right direction, and brought to the 
w^orld a fresher and a happier way of looking at 
human nature and its needs. 

Rousseau had the same spirit towards nature, 
feeling a keen personal sympathy with it, reading 
into it his own spirit, giving it a human signifi- 
cance and burden. A like tendency may be seen 
in Schleiermacher and Goethe ; in Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, and Shelley ; in Turner and Euskin. 
In one way and another all these men caught 
something of the better Greek spirit, renewed 
and transformed by the manifold tendencies of 
the modern world. At its basis is the thought 
that God is immanent in the universe, that he is 
manifest in the order and beauty of nature, in 
the virtue and manhood of men, that the life and 
light of all things is the Indwelling God. No 
curse on nature, no absolute depravity in man, 
is the result of this thought ; but God revealed 
through and speaking in both. A broader, a 
more human, and a happier theology came out 



204 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

of it for Schleiermacher and Maurice ; a fresher 
and a truer poetry for Wordsworth ; and a more 
faithful and loving art for Ruskin. Wordsworth 
saw in nature a light far more deeply interfused 
than that of setting suns ; the light of the Infinite 
Life, revealed to the eye and heart of man. To 
him, therefore, nature had a solemn import, a 
divine meaning, and a revelation of joy and truth. 
Not a series of material forces, not an unmeaning 
opposition to man, was nature as Wordsworth 
read it, but an orderly and living manifestation 
of God himself. Therefore every fact of it, every 
law of it, every glimmer of beauty on its face, Avas 
a truth to be studied and adored. To love nature 
was a worship to him; to study her an act of 
religion. 

In the same spirit Ruskin went to nature as the 
basis of art and saw in her the manifestation of 
spiritual power, beauty, and peace. To him she 
has been alive with meaning as she had been to 
Wordsw^orth ; her every fact, her every meaning, 
her every manifestation, has been accepted joy- 
fully and with solemn respect. To be perfectly 
truthful to nature was therefore demanded, for 
only through loyalty and obedience to her can 
the truth God put into nature be made known to 



BUSKIN. 205 

us. It is not the purpose of art to copy nature, 
as Ruskin understands it, but to read its meaning 
as the dwelling-place of Deity. It speaks to him 
with a man's voice, with a human expressiveness, 
as revealing the same sympathies, emotions, and 
virtues that we possess. His realism is not that 
of the Dutch school of painters, nor that of the 
materialistic men of science. He is faithful to 
nature because nature has an intellectual and a 
moral meaning, because it speaks to us of a 
beauty and a truth which are in harmony with all 
eternal and worthy things of which man can 
hope to know. 

Ruskin has carried forward the work of Rous- 
seau, Goethe, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. The 
natural world is to him the divine world, nature 
the habitation of the Eternal Spirit, art the voice 
of God's truth. The " natural-super naturalism " 
of Carlyle he has accepted with the utmost confi- 
dence, as he has accepted Carlyle as his greatest 
master in his moral teachings and in his criti- 
cisms. It is not only because nature is beautiful 
that he admires her, but also because God taber- 
nacles in her. It is not her outward form, but 
her inner meaning, which most attracts him, 
and which he is most eager to have presented. 



206 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Nature is true to God, uncorruptecl, faithful, and 
happy. The law of moral truth she manifests in 
her order and her beauty. In his thought, God, 
man, and nature belong to one order, unite into 
one interblending harmony, interfuse with and 
interpret each other, and speak face to face the 
communion of accordant spirits. In any just 
estimate of Ruskin's work and teachings this 
philosophic attitude of his must be recognized. 
A realist, as Wordsworth was a realist, to rank 
him with those who see in nature nothing beyond 
its own material order, would do him grave 
injustice. He is as religious as Raphael or 
Angelico, Dante or Milton : religious in believing 
that the natural world is truthful and good ; that 
manhood and loyalty of heart are the loving 
worship which God demands. He turns away 
from the supernatural, because God is here in 
flower, cloud, and child. He cares not for angels 
and distorted attempts to express the spiritual, 
because the whole world is spiritual, through and 
through, and alive with the motives of God's 
infinite purpose. 

Ruskin has helped us to see in nature what 
men had not seen there before, to perceive the 
beauty we had not before realized as existing. 



BUSKIX. 207 

He has also aided Wordsworth in giving us a 
point of view from which to comprehend the 
spiritual meanings of nature. Cultivated men 
and women can no longer go through life indif- 
ferent to the changing aspects of the outward 
world, or unheeding the beauty revealed in sky 
and landscape, sea and mountain. To be indiffer- 
ent to the charm, and the joy, and the fresh 
sustaining power, and the health of nature is no 
longer possible ; and to Ruskin more than to any 
other person since Wordsworth this is due. He 
is not an artist alone, seeking fine scenes to put 
on canvas ; but he is the lover of nature in all 
her aspects of repose and sublimity ; alike in her 
quiet beauty and her amazing splendor. 



IV. 

RusKiN is a critic in the largest and best sense 
which can be given to that word, defining him as 
one who points out the limitations of life and 
shows the way to what is higher and better. It 
is not right to regard the critic as a mere fault- 
finder, or as one who tests words and actions by 
rule and standard. He is one who has a genius 
for truth in words and rightness in action, whose 
sympathies are so wide and whose instincts are so 
sure that he holds men steadily to the best and 
the purest. In this sense Ruskin is a critic, and 
one of the most worthy which this century 
has produced in England. In aim he has been 
noble, in theory right, in methods sound. That 
which is capable of keeping the critic sound in 
judgment and sweet in temper Ruskin has; a 
passionate love of nature and man. Whatever 
his faults, he has been steadily true to those 



EUSKIN. 209 

things wliicli are of the highest import and the 
most enduring worth. 

With the evils of a materialistic and mone}^- 
making age he has always been at war, saying 
hard and bitter things of them oftentimes ; he 
has been querulous and impatient ; but he has 
come back again surely to nature and man, and to 
his constant delight in their beauty and their good. 
His exquisite sensitiveness to beauty gives tone 
to Ruskin's criticism. Like a delicate instrument 
he vibrates to every sound. Physical or moral 
ugliness jars upon him; it brings discord and 
pain. 

At the foundation of his criticism is his stand- 
ard of life. What is life for? To get gain, to 
eat, drink, and be merry, to make the earth a 
place for toil and machinery ? To Ruskin, none 
of these things in any degree indicate a true 
standard of life or a true appreciation of what it 
offers us. Life is for devotion, manhood, and joy. 
What will promote these things is good; what 
hinders them is evil. What gives to life a large,' 
happy, virtuous, and beautiful meaning receives 
his praise. Commercial success and mechanical 
enterprise are too material, breed ugliness, fos- 
ter competition, destroy the face of nature and 



210 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the faces of men, and make poverty and wretched- 
ness common in the world. With Rousseau, 
Ruskin would take men back to nature, to simple 
virtues, to manly deeds. As no man can grasp 
all truth, or decide to a hair's breadth where the 
right is to be found, Ruskin has done well to 
make the health and the hope, the purity and the 
beauty of life, the test of what men are to accept 
from the poet and the artist. That this is the 
only point of view for the critic is not to be 
assumed; but that it is one worth presenting no 
one can deny. A high aim and a consistent 
adherence to it are all that can be asked of the 
critic. In neither direction has Ruskin missed 
the highest mark of his calling. 

It is not as an art critic only that Ruskin is to 
be regarded, for he considers this the least impor- 
tant part of his work ; and he has ever kept art 
subordinate to the moral and social aims of life. 
He has done much to awaken a new and a higher 
interest in art, to diffuse just conceptions of Avhat 
is its true j)i'ovince, and to teach people how to 
judge of it. This he has done ; but in doing it he 
has been a critic of life itself, of its purpose and 
fulfilment. He has not merely written of the 
laws and methods of art, and of the ]oeculiarities 



EUSKIN. 211 

of the schools ; but he has shown what is the 
effect of art, in its various manifestations, on the 
whole outcome of life. That a pure and a noble 
art is healthy and helpful, and that a coarse and 
impure art is degrading and dangerous, he has 
made it a main jDurpose of his writing and lectur- 
ing to prove. In the "Stones of Venice" he 
writes with charm and power of the influence of a 
degraded art on the moral life of the people ; and 
in the "Seven Lamps of Architecture " he has 
defined the moral aims which enter into any true 
art work. Resolute, clear, and right he is in his 
writing of this kind, bold to point out errors, and 
brave to commend what is good. 

Euskin thoroughly understands the mission of 
the true critic. He has had a high and just 
standard of criticism, a distinct and worthy con- 
ception of life itself, and the purpose to teach 
men a lofty ideal. Seeing very distinctly what he 
thinks men ought to become, he has been capable 
of making others see as clearly. To those not 
overcome by the commercial spirit his criticism 
has been like that of an elder brother, to be 
accepted as the word of friendship and good will. 
He has not been a preacher, though keeping the 
moral aim ver}^ prominent; for he has looked at 



212 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

life on all sides, cleliglited in beauty as well as in 
conduct, and believed in tlie joy of life as well as 
the duty. When Fichte taught that a true 
religion and a true education consist in a rounded 
and full expression of what is in man, he 
but went before Ruskin to state the same deeply 
underlying conception. With Ruskin there has 
been no theory of a balanced development of the 
whole man, but such teaching and such admoni- 
tion as lead to this result. Loving the beautiful 
and the artistic with a master-passion, he has 
been too broad-minded to regard these as consti- 
tuting the chief good that the world yields to us. 
It is this breadth of vision, this range of sympa- 
thy, and this comprehensiveness of spirit, wliich 
make him a genuine critic. The artist is inclined 
to care only for beauty, the moralist only for 
virtue, the merchant only for material prosperity. 
Ruskin rises above all these, to that height of 
human perspective where a true consensus can be 
had of the activities of man, and where they can 
be understood in their proper relations. High 
above all else he puts the development of the soul 
through the world-experiences of man ; and under- 
neath he ranges the other functions down to the 
lowest, on which all the others rest. He has 



EUSKIN. 213 

devised no system, and made no table of human 
duties; but he ever keeps before himself the 
fact that human nature is a whole, that in a 
full and faithful life every faculty shares, and 
that we are not to live for what is sensual and 
subordinate. 

Having a distinct conception of what life 
means, and what should be the spirit in which 
we deal with it, Rushin has been able to make 
his criticism effective and helpful. To be true, 
right, and pure, is what he has demanded of the 
artist, as of other men, and those not willing so 
to be he has not spared. In a century like ours, 
a strong, steady, and hopeful voice calling to men 
in the name of truth, purity, and right is needed 
as few others are. It is no thankful task to 
point out the faults of the world ; for men love 
to be praised for the little good they do, rather 
than to be blamed for the much evil. The voice 
in the wilderness of the world's depravity and 
sin, calling to repentance and good works, heard 
by few or many, does more for man than that 
which only prophesies of smooth things. It is 
such a voice alone which announces the advent 
of the Master. There are times when the critic 
is more needed than the poet ; and Kuskin has 



214 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

done more for art than any artist the time has 
produced. 

It is not well that all which literature gives to 
us should be laden with hope too sanguine to see 
life as it is. Better it is that we should often 
hear the truth about ourselves and our own time, 
so that conceit should not grow too large, and 
self-satisfaction become a weed that overtops all 
flowers. The competent critic cannot speak too 
plainly, however unwilling men may be to listen, 
and however fanatical they may judge him to be. 
When he compares the present time with others, 
as most men do not, being satisfied with what is, 
he may do the men of his own day the most 
important service, and a service which can be 
rendered only by the fearless and clear-seeing stu- 
dent and critic of human nature. Every age has 
its idiosyncrasies, which can be understood only 
by a wide-reaching study of history, and by a 
penetrative insight into the influences which affect 
and control the direction of human feeling and 
thought. Making such a comparison the critic 
rests his judgments on a basis of truth. 

The critic has no absolute standard of truth; 
wisdom has not been opened to him more than 
to other men. His individual limitations must 



EUSKIN. 215 

appear in whatever criticisms he may make on 
the doings and sayings of other men; and they 
are almost invariably those not only which per- 
tain to the individual, but those also which mark 
the school of thought, the time, and the country 
to which he belongs. There are fashions in 
thought as in dress ; and the critic partakes of 
the era of which he is a part. The trend of 
thought which sets through it affects him as well 
as the poet and the artist. In a time of idealism, 
he measures all the art products of the world in 
the light of his faith in the individual soul. In a 
time of scientific research and agnostic specula- 
tion, he interprets every effort of the imagina- 
tion by the aid of heredity and universal law. 

There being no literary standard which can be 
applied with unfailing certainty, so that we can 
measure and interpret all literary products with 
rigid exactness, we must read the critic's sayings 
by the help of what he is as a man. The criti- 
cisms of Lessing, Schlegel, Taine, Carlyle, and 
Lewes are not to be read as if they all interpreted 
man and nature in the same way. Even their 
literary judgments are affected by their philo- 
sophical theories. Carlyle and Taine will not 
agree about Goethe or the French Revolution, 



'"^ 



216 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

simply because they do not agree about the 
nature of man and the controlling force in the 
universe. It is important, therefore, that we 
should know where the critic belongs, what 
company he keeps, what coterie or fashion he 
affects, and what philosophy he embraces. 

Ruskin is not a lesser Wordsworth or a revived 
Rousseau, however much he may resemble these 
writers in some respects. In his love of nature 
and man he is one with them ; but in his phil- 
osophy and his religion he does not walk with 
them hand in hand. To the revolutionary period 
Ruskin does not belong either with his head or 
with his heart. His sympathies are neither with 
those who preceded the revolutionary period nor 
with those who came after it. Even less is he to 
be ranked with the men of the present time cf 
scientific enthusiasm; for at all points he is a 
critic and opponent of science in its evolutionary 
and agnostic tendencies. 

Ruskin's attitude towards science, the social 
problems pf the day, religion, and art, is only to 
be understood by a careful analysis of that phase 
of thought expressed in the Oxford movement, 
pre-Raphaelitism, and the renascence of mediieval- 
ism in art and poetry. The burst of enthusiasm 



RUSKIN. 217 

which welcomed in the revolution had spent its 
force, the human spirit became exhausted of its 
fresh energies and hopes, the world was not 
reformed and transformed with the speed of a 
whirlwind, and men sank back discouraged into 
the beliefs which ages had sanctioned with their 
approval. This reaction against the doctrines of 
the revolution is to be marked in the later teach- 
ings of Wordsworth and Coleridge ; and from 
them the tide set in the direction of the past. 
While the movement of the great body of the 
English was towards reform in politics, and a 
more rational construction of religion, a lesser 
company had its eyes turned on the ages gone 
before. There were those who were above all 
things anxious to know how to prevent a new 
revolution. They were not eager for new truth, 
not zealous for a coming kingdom of freedom and 
rationality, and they were not confident that 
man can guide his own way to the true destiny 
which awaits him. It was for assured truth they 
yearned, and confidence that they were embos- 
omed and sustained of God. They looked back 
with approval upon the ages when men were 
absorbed in the building of great cathedrals, 
when Western Europe was united in the idea 



218 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

of a Catholic church, and when men had an 
unquestioning faith in God. 

Something of the spirit of that movement came 
to Ruskin. It is in his love of Gothic art, in his 
hatred of science and mechanical advancement, 
and in his social theories. He did not become a 
Puseyite or an anglo-Catholic ; but his criticisms 
are inspired by something of the same frame of 
mind, the same fears for the present and the 
same faith in the past. With much that is in 
entire opposition to the Oxford movement, there 
is to be found in him much that grows out of the 
same causes. Distrust of the revolutionary period 
in most of its phases appears in him as much as 
in Newman, and a refusal to believe that the post- 
revolution era is an advance on the mediaeval time 
of unity and faith. With the growth of democ- 
racy, and machinery, and materialistic science, 
art, religion, and social happiness have languished, 
or ceased to exist in any noble form. Such is 
the direction taken by much of his criticism, 
especially by that of the latter half of his life. 
He is not in sympathy with those movements in 
our time Avhich are hailed with delight by so 
many as indications of the world's advancement 
towards a day of ample knowledge and social 



EUSKIN. 219 

unity. To him they are signs of anarchy, infidel- 
ity, and a debased art; signs also of a loss of 
moral power and true intellectual insight. 

Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Newman each pos- 
sess some of the characteristics which we see in 
Ruskin. All three directed their eyes to the past 
as well as the future; and all three were more 
concerned for the things of the inner man than 
for those of the outward world. In his sympa- 
thies, his intellectual convictions, and his social 
theories, Ruskin has been such a critic as this 
combination of qualities would indicate. It is to 
the time of strong and assured faith he directs 
his eyes, when art was to men a passion and an 
insight, and when masterful minds ruled over 
them with the power of genius. It is to the 
standard of what was greatest in such an age, 
as seen through the glamor of his imagination, 
that he brings our own time, and finds it to be 
defective. We ought to be judged, however, in so 
far only as art is concerned, by a time which has 
given to the world so little that is great and 
noble. 

In the technical sense Ruskin is not a critic 
safe and sound. He has not the intellectual and 
logical acumen which are necessary for the profes- 



220 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

sional criticism of the world's artistic products. 
He has the seeing eye rather than the analytic 
brain ; he loves beauty for its own sake, and not 
because of the proportions in which' it is com- 
bined. He is not always a sure guide to the 
technical interpretation of art ; for he never looks 
at it in its dry details, but only as seen through a 
halo of sentiment, and out of eyes deep-set with 
genius and poetry. He misread the life of 
Turner, because he could not look at it with 
eyes undazzled by beauty and heart untouched 
with sentiment. Turner died wealthy, successful 
beyond most men, and with many more friends 
than he had the sympathy to appreciate ; but 
Enskin saw him as the mediaeval knight saw the 
lady of his love, through a glimmer of gloAving 
sentiment, and as one whose cause at all hazards 
must be defended. Turner said that Ruskin saw 
in his works what he never j)ut there ; and it is 
this gift of imaginative interpretation which 
makes Ruskin the commanding and authoritative 
critic which he is in regard to every form of 
artistic work. There are no rules according to 
which a work of art can be fashioned ; no recipe 
has been devised for an epic, a statue, or a great 
painting. Only when such a rule has been dis- 



Eussm. 221 

covered can the critic have a standard for the 
exact measurement of a work of true art. Any 
attempt to measure the artist, in whatever kind, 
other than sympathetically, is a failure ; and 
criticism has again and again shown the folly 
of such presumption. It is not the ability to 
point out errors in versification or construction 
which makes a critic of poetry, simply because 
the heart and living worth of any true poem are 
not to be found in such technicalities. It is a 
commanding insight into a wider range of life 
than that to which the poet has given himself 
in his work, which alone makes a critic worthy 
of the name. 

The true critic is not he who analyzes a work 
of art into the tattered shreds and patches of 
defect, but he who shows its relations to the 
other parts of that great temple in which human- 
ity worships the beautiful. The artist expresses 
all the deep passionings of his soul on one instru- 
ment, while the critic is he who directs the or- 
chestra that pours forth all the struggles and 
aspirations of mankind. Such a critic Ruskin is 
in the temper and range of his thought, his 
wealth and loftiness of vision, and his closeness 
and heartiness of sympathy. It is the whole man 



222 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

he brings to his work as a critic; not a coldly 
logical intellect, trained in the narrow formalisms 
of the schools. He is a man alive with sentiment, 
glowing with sympathy, looking kindly at the 
efforts of other men to give beauty a fitting form ; 
and he judges as one who has himself been 
touched and transformed by the glowing ardors 
of creation, and whose eyes are also set with 
tender ravishment on all the deeds of men. 

In his earlier books Ruskin is limited by his 
attempts at fine writing, and by his desire to 
follow Richard Hooker and the other masters of 
English prose, as he has admitted. In the later 
he writes mainly for a listening audience, and his 
style is of that loose and familiar kind best suited 
for oral delivery. There is too much attention to 
the manner of his writing in the " Modern Paint- 
ers," " Stones of Venice," and " Seven Lamps of 
Architecture," and too little in the lectures of the 
last twenty years. Of late, too, he has grown 
impatient of what he does not like, petulant and 
complaining, often querulous and fault-finding. 
This being true, he has manifested none of 
Carlyle's savage hatred of shams, or his volcanic 
outbursts against the ideas not in sympathy with 
his own. Ruskin has lost not a little of his iullu- 



EUSKIN. 223 

ence by his spirit of contempt and his tone of 
pessimism. To be in harmony with one's age is 
better for the sake of reputation, and more repose- 
ful to the nerves ; but the highest spirit of truth 
bids men speak what they really think, and strike 
at what they believe to be WTong and vicious. 
When w*e can look at Ru skin's work with a 
broader perspective than is now possible, the 
faults which seem so large in him will recede 
into the background, while his genius and his 
eloquence, his joy in nature and the good of 
man, will come forward into conspicuous impor- 
tance. 

.■ In the main drift and meaning of Ruskin's 
work he is sound, sure, and strong, seeing what 
is right, and saying it in a way true and good. 
But in many matters of lesser interest and impor- 
tance he seems to be as wrong-headed and wilful 
as possible. He will not come to America, be- 
cause there are no castles here; he says there 
should be a special dress for each class in soci- 
ety ; he has criticised painters whom he could not 
approve, until he has been brought into court for 
it. In a great number of such opinions and ac- 
tions he seems to be quite out of the way of what 
is simple and sensible, 



224 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

None the less, here is a critic who has redeemed 
his task from the charge of low and unworthy 
aims, and who has done his work in a manner 
true and manly. The work of correction with 
him has been one of education ; he has taught 
more than he has reproved. If he has gone 
through the garden others have planted, pointing 
to errors in the laying out of the grounds and in 
their decoration, it has not been alone to indicate 
defects ; but he has also shown a better way of 
adornment and plotting, and he has set the fash- 
ion with his own hands. Teaching the artists to 
see the beauty and the meaning of nature, he has 
shown them wherein they failed, and how to do 
truer and more perfect work. He has been a 
critic only because he had something large and 
worthy to teach, which itself becomes a means of 
correcting what is smaller and less true. He has 
done much to make criticism a constructive work, 
because he has not been contented with the arbi- 
trary laws laid down in books of rhetoric and 
logic, applying them to the writings of other 
men; but he has gone to nature and humanity, 
studied them in their relations to human expres- 
sion of every kind, literary as well as artistic, and 
there found a canon of criticism worthy to be 



RUSKIN. 225 

applied in the name of creative genius. Not to 
laws of taste lias he called our attention, nor to 
laws of invention and coloring ; but to laws of 
fact and truth, laws of beauty and joy. Such 
criticism becomes essentially constructive and 
poetical ; and on it as a foundation must rest all 
true art. It differs from creation in being an 
intuitive appreciation of beauty, rather than a 
constructive and iustinctive expression of it. 
Joined to a masterly and delightful stjde, and 
to a sympathy for nature and man of the keenest, 
such criticism itself becomes both artistic and 
poetical. It gives us joy with its beauty, it sat- 
isfies the intellect with its facts and its laws, and 
it strengthens the moral nature with its rightness 
of aim. A new mission and a new spirit have 
come to criticism as Ruskin has dealt with it, for 
it has ceased to be literary and fastidious, and 
come to be one with life and its genuine interests. 
It includes art, morals, and religion, in a synthesis 
higher and more vital than either, because free 
from the limitations which each has when pursu- 
ing by itself the ends it seeks. At the heart of 
it, and always in its truer spirit, has Ruskin's 
criticism been such as this in its constructive 
reach and purpose. 



Rtjskin's chief work has been done as a critic 
of art, and as the result of his desire to expound 
the great principles underlying its development. 
To this exposition has he especially devoted the 
" Modern Painters," " Stones of Venice," " Seven 
Lamps of Architecture," "Elements of Drawing," 
" Laws of Fiesole," and his numerous lectures on 
art. His work has been very different from that 
of the creative artist, but it has been none the less 
valuable. It is of a kind which no artist could 
have accomplished, but it is of the highest impor- 
tance for the comprehension of art as an expres- 
sion of the instinct in man for beauty and for 
creation. The artist can apjDreciate what is beau- 
tiful, he has an instinct and a passion for it, and 
he is possessed of a genius for embodying in forms 
of artistic loveliness that beauty which is the de- 
light of his soul ; but he is not likely to under- 
stand the relations of this instinct for creation to 
226 



EUSKIN. 227 

the other manifestations of the higher life in man, 
or the principles on which its true development 
depends. Only he who sees in art one of the 
manifestations of . man's creative activity, who 
studies its various phases in relation to the his- 
toric development of the race, who can truly 
appreciate the effects of art on use, morals, and 
relio-ion, and the results which these in their turn 
produce on art, can give a satisfactory interpreta- 
tion of the functions and principles of art. 

This is the work which Ruskin has done ; and 
it has been one of the greatest importance, not 
only for the art, but also for the culture of his 
time. As he has accomplished his work, it has 
not in any degree been one of compiling the 
general laws of art ; but he possesses such a rare 
and unrivalled genius that he speaks with the 
profoundest insight and authority. He has ex- 
pounded the true meaning of the artist's calling 
in its relations to human culture, and the spirit 
in which its highest results are to be attained. 
He has interpreted the world of beauty with 
which the artists have to deal, and set forth the 
laws of it ; and he has declared to them how the 
mind must act in order to find the highest meas- 
ure of that beauty. His work has not been alone 



228 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

that of criticising them and their methods ; but 
he has gone to nature, studied its manifestations 
under every aspect likely to attract the artist, and 
shown what are its facts and its laws. Nature 
thus becomes the critic who condemns the artist's 
unfaithful work. Ruskin has been a most loving 
student of the outward world, delighting in its 
every phase of beauty and activity, and watching 
it as a lover his beloved, lest any look of that dear 
one should escape him. All true art, he believes, 
grows out of the love of nature, and from the 
root of affection for her. " He who works humbly 
with nature," he said in one of his earlier books, 
" will seldom be in danger of losing sight of art. 
He will commonly find in all that is truly of man's 
work something of their original, for which he 
will regard them with gratitude, and sometimes 
follow them with respect. While he who takes 
art as his authority may entirely lose sight of all 
that it interprets, and sink at once into the sin of 
an idolater and the degradation of a slave." 

First of all, Ruskin has aimed his criticism at 
the conventional in art, declaring that it is false 
and unworthy, and that it fails to satisfy the aes- 
thetic sense. He would have men see the world 
as it is, have regard to truth, and aim at presenting 



BUSKIN. 229 

the life which everywhere speaks through nature. 
As opposed to the conventional, when it presents 
itself in forms which have become unmeaning, and 
in expressions which have lost their life-giving 
power, he calls men to behold the joy, the beauty, 
and the variety of the natural world. In contact 
with that are freshness of spirit, health of con- 
science, and joy of the whole being to be gained ; 
away from it, all is dearth and dreariness. Before 
Rousseau the theoretical conception of society was 
stiff, and formal, and conventional; after him it 
became simple, loving, and natural. Before 
Wordsworth men looked on nature as dead, un- 
lovely, and grievous ; after him they saw it to be 
alive, beautiful, and joyous. Before Ruskin the 
English artists delighted in the formal, the con- 
ventional, and the traditional ; as they have been 
affected by his teachings they have come to 
love the pure, the truthful, and the natural. 
With the same bold enthusiasm and the same 
prophet's zeal as his predecessors possessed has he 
called men to behold the true in the world about 
them. In it are to be found the highest beauty, 
the keenest delight, the purest moral satisfaction. 
This makes life worth its sacrifices and its bur- 
dens ; makes these lighter and more easily borne. 



230 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

To be in harmony with nature, to feel its great 
and joyous life pulsing about one, to sympathize 
with it in light, in storm, and in tender forms of 
beauty, is a privilege and delight for all who come 
to her in the child's spirit. The spirit of pre- 
sumption and self-seeking yields nothing great 
and good ; but to the humble, the trusting, and 
the loving of heart, nature is like a fond mother, 
ready to open her treasures, and to tell many a 
delightful tale concerning them. 

Ruskin says to the artists. Be true ; and this is 
his principal teaching. Man should be as truth- 
fully portrayed as nature herself. There is that 
in man which is worthy of the highest respect and 
honor — of so much respect and honor that we 
ought not to debase his nature or lower the stand- 
ard of his action. He is to respect himself so 
much, whether as artist or as critic, that he will 
speak only the truth. And man is not only to be 
regarded in his relations to truth, but the artist 
must feel for and with him. No artist in any 
kind can do his work as it ought to be done unless 
he has sympathy with humanity. The artist, as 
an artist, does not attain to the full measure of 
what man is, when he studies him merely as one 
of the phenomena which life presents. To feel 



ETJSKIN. 231 

the joy and pain of others as our own, to enter 
with inmost unity of spirit into what men live for 
and take joy in, is absolutely necessary to the 
artist who would give a worthy interpretation of 
human life in any of its aspects. 

Great as has been Ruskin's love of nature, his 
love of man is greater, and it is nearer to all the 
throbbings of his heart. The centre of his thought 
and work is man, and he would have us believe 
that nature and art are only to be tested by what 
they do for humanity. To him nothing is of value 
which does not come within the range of human 
interests, and no science is to be cared for which 
does not add to human life. " The main aim and 
principle of this book," he says in " Modern 
Painters," " is that it declares the perfectness and 
the eternal beauty of the work of God, and tests 
all work of man by concurrence with or subjection 
to that." Nature, as the eternally abiding and 
unchanging reflection to man of God's law and 
will, is an element in his teaching of the most con- 
spicuous importance. It is not nature as a beau- 
tiful object, as the medium of beauty and joy, 
which most of all attracts him ; but it is nature as 
the reflection of the Infinite Artist to the imagina- 
tion and conscience of man to which he gives his 



232 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

heart. He is interested in man more than in 
nature, because in man there is a personal re- 
sponse to the word of the Eternal Truth, growth 
under the law of freedom, and moral illumination 
as the highest outcome of his being. "In these 
books of mine," Ruskin says, in the third volume 
of " Modern Painters," " their distinctive charac- 
ter as essays on art is their bringing everything 
to a root in human passion or human hope. Aris- 
ing first not in any desire to explain the principles 
of art, but in the endeavor to defend an individual 
painter from injustice, they have been colored 
throughout, — nay, continually altered in shape, 
and even warped and broken, by digressions re- 
specting social questions which had for me an 
interest tenfold greater than the work I had been 
forced into undertaking. Every principle of 
painting which I have stated is traced to some 
vital or spiritual fact ; and in my works on archi- 
tecture the preference accorded finally to one 
school over another is founded on a comparison 
of their influence on the life of the workman — a 
question by all other writers on the subject of 
architecture wholly forgotten or despised." What 
will help towards the perfection of man has ever 
been foremost in Ruskin's aims and in his works. 



RUSKIN. 233 

More than almost any other moral teacher Ruskin 
has made everything take rank in accordance with 
the influence it produces on the human affections. 
He does not value art in and for itself, but for the 
sake of what it does to satisfy the thought and 
the life of man. He applies moral standards to it 
on all occasions, as when he says that " art should 
be noble in conception, delicate in execution, true 
in perception, precise in arrangement, and faithful 
in fulfilment." He has developed his theory of 
art in the "Laws of Fiesole," in words concise 
and eloquent; "I have endeavored to teach 
through my past life that this fair tree Igdrasil 
of human art can only flourish when its dew is 
affection ; its air, devotion ; the rock of its roots, 
patience ; and its sunshine, God." 

To him, the theory that art is for art's sake 
alone, for the sake of mere beauty and the satis- 
faction of the aesthetic nature, is not wholly sound 
or true. All art, as he understands it, is moral ; 
and there can be no thoroughly true and genuine 
development of art that is dissociated from the 
moral element in life. In more than one of his 
books he has written in his most rhetorical and 
eloquent strain of the corruption produced in art, 
and its gradual decadence and destruction, when 



234 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the moral element has been lost sight of in a mere 
love of beauty and luxury. It is impossible to 
separate the products of the aesthetic nature from 
those of the other human faculties, and to judge 
them wholly by themselves. All the faculties are 
faculties of one and the same being, belong to the 
same nature, and testify to the realities of the 
same world. Man is not a bundle of unrelated 
organs, but a living soul. There is unity and 
consent of all his faculties, when rightly used, 
to one purpose. It is idle, therefore, to select 
the products of any one faculty, or set of facul- 
ties, with the purpose of judging these by them- 
selves. No such separation and special judgment 
is possible ; for all the faculties cohere together 
in one living whole, to give testimony on every 
subject which comes before them. In art, the 
sesthetic nature leads; but every other faculty 
comes in to help make up the final conclusion ; 
and there can be no large and worthy art if the 
intellectual faculties, as well as the moral and reli- 
gious, do not have part in the result. It takes 
the whole man to produce the best and most per- 
fect art work ; and only the whole man, in all his 
relations, can rightly judge of the Avorth of that 
which is thus produced. And just as true is it 



KUSKIN. 235 

that this product of the total nature in man must 
have the effect of elevating his whole being, and 
of stimulating into healthy activity every part of 
his nature, and every faculty he possesses. At 
the same time, it is not to be overlooked that men 
witli very great gifts in some directions may be 
almost entirely wanting in others. No man has 
his faculties in perfect balance and on an equal 
range of capacity. An acute conscience may be 
accompanied by a weak intellect. Great business 
genius may appear in conjunction with an almost 
total want of religious insight. The poet may 
have little musical abilitj^, as the painter may be 
no poet. Great intellectual powers, — especially 
of the logical, philosophical, and scientific order, — 
are not usually attended by a corresponding devel- 
opment of sentiment and imagination. Equally 
true is it that the poet and the musician are sel- 
dom endowed with acute logical powers. In mak- 
ing a genius, nature is apt to exhaust her gifts on 
one or two faculties, leaving the others as in 
ordinary men If Ruskin intends to say that 
the genius is always a man of moral power, he 
greatly errs ; for artistic gifts of the very high- 
est order may be joined to moral qualities of the 
weakest kind. Turner was the greatest and most 



236 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

original of landscape painters ; but many a man 
of the most commonplace intellectual gifts has a 
keener appreciation than he had of what is moral 
in thought and right in conduct. Yet it is also 
true that on the beholder the eifect is commanding 
and life-giving in proportion to the moral rightness 
which appears in a work of art. The man want- 
ing in moral insight is a defective man, and the 
expression of his life in every direction will par- 
take of this limitation. However great his art, 
whatever the beauty with which it is touched, it 
will be imperfect as his own life is imperfect. 
Logic is not necessary to great art ; but a quality 
of wholeness and soundness, wliich we call moral- 
ity, is in the highest degree required. Morality is 
not so much a special faculty or gift in man as 
the rightness and healthiness of all the faculties; 
and as such it is necessary to that natural tone of 
joy and delight in the beauties and the truths of 
nature which art should give. 

This power of showing the moral element in 
Jife and experience is one of the highest merits of 
Ruskin as a teacher. He is never a mere moral- 
ist, he never puts forth conscience by itself, and 
never assumes duty to be the only object and 
worth in life. He clothes all subjects, even beauty 



RUSKm. 237 

and the affections, with an element of truth and 
duty, showing how tliey are rehited to other human 
interests and to the health of the whole man. 

True and excellent as Ruskin usually is as a 
critic, he many times presses his zeal too far, and 
carries his theories beyond the limits of truth. He 
makes the moral aim in art too prominent, and 
insists too strongly that the artist must be a man 
of pure conduct and character in order to the 
accomplishment of great work. He is also too 
uncompromising a realist in his theory of the rela- 
tions of art to nature. It is against lawless and 
fanciful work, however, that he directs his criti- 
cism in behalf of realism, rather than against work 
that is thoughtful and spiritual in aim. Coj)ying 
nature he detests as much as any one can, and he 
pronounces it not to be art. Art does not violate 
nature either by pretence of knowing more than 
she does or by foulness of aim and method. The 
best antidote to that realism which presents the 
gross and the licentious under the name of art is 
the pure and healthy realism of Ruskin. With 
him, to be true to nature does not mean to be im- 
pure and vile. He may adopt too often the mor- 
alist's point of view ; but he is never didactic and 
puritanic. He believes that at the heart nature is 



238 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

as pure as she is lovely, as chaste as she is truth- 
ful. If this attitude of mind made him less de- 
voted to art and beauty, we should be suspicious 
of it ; but it never does. 

His demand for truth in art may be carried too 
far. It is a matter of no great importance that 
Raphael clothes the Apostles in the garb of the 
Greek philosophers ; the main matter is that he 
gives them the character of apostles, bearing the 
infinite hopes of the Gospel in their faces. Shak- 
spere's wondrous insight into character is not one 
whit less true to human nature because he makes 
Bohemia a maritime country, and introduces Chris- 
tian burial into pagan times. The utmost faithful- 
ness to external details does in no degree atone for 
lack of inward truth in art. We demand that the 
artist shall interpret for us the soul of nature ; and 
we ask of him the capacity to arouse in us those 
feelings and aspirations which nature herself pro- 
duces, but transformed by those which belong to 
man and his higher life. Given these results, all 
else is of little importance ; for this is what art 
must mean to all who love it in a truly loyal spirit. 
It is only in words, however, that Ruskin carries 
his realism beyond the true mark ; for he is him- 
self an idealist in philosophy as well as in the 



KUSKIN. 239 

outcome of his theory of art. He estimates the 
worth of any artist's work by its power of awak- 
ening thought, as well as by its faithfulness to 
nature. It is feeling and thought which add the 
artistic element to nature ; for the soul in man, as 
he wisely says, is the only true artist. The law of 
all poetic and artistic creation he has defined in 
words which show him at his best as a critic : 
"Art is valuable or otherwise only as it expresses 
the personality, activity, and living perception of 
a good and great soul ; it may express and contain 
this with little help from execution, and less from 
science ; and if it have not this, if it show not 
the vigor, perception, and invention of a mighty 
human spirit, it is worthless, — worthless, I mean, 
as art ; it may be precious in some other way, but 
as art it is nugatory. Once let this be well under- 
stood among us, and magnificent consequences 
will follow. Let me repeat it in other terms, so 
that I may not be misunderstood. All art is great 
and good and true only so far as it is distinctively 
the work of manhood in its entire and highest 
sense ; that is to say, not the work of limbs and 
fingers, but of soul." 

Ruskin's work has included an exposition of the 
aesthetic faculty in man, an interpretation of the 



240 POETS AND PKOBLEMS. 

beautiful in nature, a philosophy of the relations 
of the two to each other, the history and the laws 
of art as he has understood them, and the' relations 
of art to the other elements of human life. It is 
this broadly comprehensive treatment of the whole 
subject which gives so much value to his work, 
and which places it high above any merely critical 
exposition. This enables him to look at art in the 
highest and most genuine spirit of idealism, as an 
attempt to bring out the meaning of nature, and 
to interpret its spiritual element. Nature is in- 
formed with a soul; and to see in it only the 
relations of space, light, shadow, form, and color, 
is to see it as it is not. To see the spiritual 
clearly, to appreciate its influence alike on nature 
and man, is essential to the broadest and the 
truest estimate of art. Ruskin has seen it, been 
inspired by it, and holds all art up to the light of 
its law. This subtle, transforming, spiritualizing 
phase of art he recognizes as of supreme impor- 
tance. If a realist, it is because he sees in nature 
a Divine Life, and because he believes God has 
made nature a witness of himself. 

In dealing with nature we are dealing with 
eternal truth, with that which God designed for 
our health, growth, joy, education, and correction. 



RUSKIN. 241 

The more truly we come into harmony with it, 
the nearer we are to God, and the nearer will our 
lives come to that of which they are capable. Its 
beauty is a spiritual element rather than a mate- 
rial; and it cheers, uplifts, and consoles man by 
its presence around him, and its ministry to his 
spirit. Ruskin's teaching of this kind is almost 
identical with that of Wordsworth, though less 
pantheistic, and with a greater recognition of 
universal beauty. He has more of impassioned 
feeling than Wordsworth had, a keener eye for 
the subtle effects of cloud and sea; but in the 
main drift of his thought he has been working 
with the poet to accomplish the same grand 
results. It was the original genius of Turner, a 
genius of the highest order, which at first at- 
tracted his attention, gave direction and purpose 
to his thoughts as a young man, and made him 
see in nature that vision of eternal reality which 
it is the mission of true art to interpret. That 
youthful championship is one that will remain 
memorable in the history of literature and art. 
It has given a leading purpose to Ruskin's life, 
and to his studies in history, art, literature, and 
political economy. His early success as an artist 
proves that he has not been a mere critic of art, 



242 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

but that he has written out of ample knowledge. 
A long-cherished purpose of devoting himself to 
science, which he expressed to Miss Mitford, 
indicates that his studies of nature have had a 
genuine foundation in his own mind. He has 
often declared his interest in man's social rela- 
tions to be deeper than any other, and his studies 
in that direction prove him a thoughtful and 
sympathetic lover of his race. . It is this breadth 
of view which marks the art criticism of Ruskin, 
and it enables him to speak of art in the light of 
every human interest. To the artist this breadth 
of view may give a result too general and too 
unprofessional to be fully acceptable ; but for 
the student of nature and man it is of the 
highest value. It is for the sake of his unity 
and comprehensiveness of view that the lover of 
high thought will turn to Ruskin. Life ceases to 
be narrow, conventional, and sectarian under his 
teaching. The puritan hatred of art, and the 
renascence love of sensuality have alike disap- 
peared ; and we have come to a balanced estimate 
and appreciation of what life is in its manifold 
manifestations. 



VI. 

RuSKiN is possessed of ardent feelings and 
intense sympathies. His heart is warm and 
glowing, and his affections strong. To help 
others is to him a delight, and it is one of the 
noblest objects life offers him. He feels with 
the poor, takes their sorrows and burdens to his 
own heart, and has for them whatever of sympa- 
thy man can give to man. 

Great as has been Ruskin's interest in art, his 
interest in subjects connected with political 
economy and social science has been in some 
respects even greater. In this field he has 
also taken the character of a reformer, giving his 
time and his money most freely to the further- 
ance of the ideas and the practical results in 
which he has believed. In his " Political Economy 
of Art," " Unto This Last," " Munera Pulveris," 
"Time and Tide," and "Crown of Wild Olives" 
he has set forth his radical remedies for the social 

243 



244 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

evils of the world. These do not lie in the 
direction of communism, but in that of the 
" Christian Socialism " which Kingsley and Mau- 
rice advocated with so much zeal forty years ago. 
Very often it occurs that an author does not 
know which part of his work is of the most 
importance ; and so we find Ruskin passing by 
his writings which the world most values now, 
and is likely to prize the highest in the future, 
to claim for his essays on political economy a 
merit which does not belong to them. He has 
said of one series of these essays, that they 
contained better work than most of his former 
writings, and more important truths than all of 
them put together. 

Ruskin writes on these subjects rather as a 
moralist than as a scientific investigator, and he 
is guided by his affections rather than by his 
reason. He is little interested in those laws of 
production and distribution with which the politi- 
cal economists are mainly concerned, and he 
believes that there is something of greater im- 
portance in the social relations of men than value 
and price, wages and profits, rent and interest, 
taxation and credit, commodities and capital. 
About these things he cares very little, and yet 



RTJSKIN. 245 

he cares very much about the men and women 
and children who are affected by them through 
all the interests of their lives. Ruskin is con- 
cerned for the people who are affected by want 
and ignorance ; and he wishes to do what will 
make them happier and better. The result is 
that he attacks many things commonly regarded 
as right, and he proposes an order of society very 
different from that now existing. 

It is easy to see why his theories have not been 
acceptable to most of his readers. His rejection 
of the principles of political economy is enough in 
itself to lead to distrust of what he may have 
to say. He goes farther, however, and attacks 
usury, defines money to be simply a documentary 
expression of legal claim, needing no basis in 
intrinsic value, demands a complete recognition 
of the radical claims of the working-men, and 
would have luxury and great riches forbidden 
by the state. Especially does he attack the 
theory of demand and supply, claiming that the 
duties and the sympathies of men annul such a 
law, and make it void. In this, as in his other 
social theories, he is too much a sentimentalist, 
even if he is always interesting and suggestive. 
His heart is in the right place, however, and he 



246 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

gives to sentiment and sympathy their just recog- 
nition. 

He is entirely right in repudiating the inflexi- 
ble laws set up by the teachers of political 
economy, in behalf of sympathy and a humane 
spirit. If nature is stern, man need not therefore 
be inhuman. The political economists write as if 
man were nothing more than a part of material 
nature, as if he had no feelings and were incapa- 
ble of suffering. Ruskin would have them turn 
about, see what the social problems are as they 
affect man, and then direct their teachings to his 
succor and improvement. He relies so much on 
sentiment, and on the promptings of a kind heart, 
that he does not always rightly estimate the facts 
and the laws which political economy presents. 
To man he thinks is given a better way than that 
of science, the way of love and helpfulness. No 
one insists on this better way, or preaches the law 
of it, which is the law of love, more zealously and 
sympathetically than he. He is the apostle of 
affection almost as distinctly as he is the apostle of 
beauty. He has the right to be the apostle of both, 
for the two blend into and interpret each other. 

Ruskin has adopted the Christian tlieory of 
human society in opposition to that of science. 



BUSKIN. 247 

Political economy regards man as subjected to 
the stern laws of nature, and science has claimed 
that the natural state of man is that of competi- 
tion. The fittest survives, but through warfare 
of the strong on the weak. Ruskin says this is 
not the higher law, not the true theory of human 
society. Surely it is not what the higher spirit of 
love would dictate. In man as a moral being the 
law of antagonism and competition ceases, and 
the law of love and sympathy takes its place. 

Whether his theories are right or wrong, Rus- 
kin has been truly in earnest in his sympathies 
vfiih the people. He has given much money, and 
in later years the better part of his life, to the 
elevation of the working classes. In 1871 he 
founded "St. George's Guild," with the object of 
improving waste land, developing education and 
culture among those devoted to agricultural pur- 
suits, and helping the industrious poor to better 
their condition in life. All of Ruskin's projects 
of this kind are too theoretical and chimerical; 
good in their way, and founded on the noblest 
and most humane purpose, but incapable of real- 
ization in any large and influential manner. 

It would not be possible for Ruskin to look at 
life in the manner of the men of science. His 



248 POETS AKD PEOBLEMS. 

sympathies run too deep and strong for that ; he 
is too much the lover and the poet, and his 
sentiments are too impassioned and imperative. 
Much that the scientists have been doing he cares 
not for, and he even treats with contempt. It is 
well that such men as he should be born into the 
world from time to time, to redeem it from 
selfishness, and to give it the lift of ideal aims. 
Devoid of imagination, the men of science look 
only at facts and laws; devoid of feeling, they 
forget that men suffer and die. Gifted in the 
highest measure with both feeling and imagina- 
tion, Ruskin realizes the depravity, the igno- 
rance, and the poverty which beset men, and 
he enters into their joys and woes as if they 
w^ere his own. That he is in the wrong in his 
speculative opinions might have been antici- 
pated of the artist and the poet; but the worth 
of Ruskin's studies in social science consists in 
their attitude of sympathy and in their rich- 
ness of human affection. It would seem as if 
when his head was the most wrong his heart 
was the most right. He attacks science because 
it is hard and inhuman, and because it has no 
concern for beauty and affection. He attacks 
political economy because it knows man only as 



RTJSKIN. 249 

the victim of inflexible laws, only as the puppet 
that dances to show what the laws are. He is 
more concerned for the puppets than for the 
wires on which they dance, more for men than 
for the world in which they live. 

In art Ruskin is an original critic, but in politi- 
cal economy his theories are determined by the 
backward looking tendencies of his mind. That 
which makes him a great art critic also makes 
him a social fanatic. Having been influenced by 
the counter-revolution, he abhors democracy and 
all which grows out of personal and political 
liberty. With Carlyle, he would have men ruled 
by the " strong man," who by his genius or his 
God-given powers, as Ruskin thinks, is alone 
among men entitled to rule over his fellows. 
Much as he is interested in the welfare of the 
working-men, he does not desire the ballot for 
them. It is in the extension of the ballot that 
he finds the cause of the evil days which have 
come on the laboring classes. The working-man 
is given the franchise, and then told to stand on 
his own feet, defend his own interests, and pro- 
tect his own rights. In saying this, doubtless 
Ruskin is right in some degree ; for the weak and 
ignorant are thus left to contend feebly against 



250 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the hard and cruel world. Ruskin believes in 
paternal goverment, where the king and the lord 
are the protectors and the guides of those under 
them. Whatever of social anarchy is in the 
world to-day, and whatever of evil has come to 
the working-men, he believes to be the result of 
the abandonment of paternal government or gov- 
ernment by the men ordained of heaven by their 
genius for the guidance and protection of others. 
It is true that in England the position of the 
laborer has been degraded with the advancement 
of constitutional government ; but the cause is to 
be sought in the presence of paternalism rather 
than in the growth of democracy. He who is 
protected by the strong arm of another always 
remains a serf. Nothing develops men so much 
as self-reliance, and that is never to be fostered 
under any form of paternalism in government. 

In his social theories Ruskin is sadly in the 
wrong. In the democracy he so strongly con- 
demns is ih^ only remedy for many of the social 
ills against which he contends. His own reme- 
dies seem ridiculous compared with the magni- 
tude of the evils as he describes them. His " St. 
George's Guild," his museum, his planting of 
waste land, and his " Fors Clavigera" seem like 



EUSKIN. 251 

the old woman's broom with which she would 
sweep back the ocean. They are but petty tri- 
flings with a mighty problem, which Ruskin ap- 
proaches with theories wholly wrong and by 
methods inadequate. The man who seeks to aid 
the poor by publishing a periodical for them at a 
price three times that which it would ordinarily 
command must be regarded as in some degree a 
visionary. In whatever favorable light we may 
look at his work of this kind, it must be pro- 
nounced chimerical. His purpose may be of the 
best, but that does not save him from embracing 
social theories which are erroneous. 

It is not a strong man to guide and protect 
them which the working-men need, but just laws 
and an adequate protection of their rights as 
laborers. It is not the taking away of usury 
which is to give the laborers their rights or bring 
to them plenty and happiness. That which Rus- 
kin would bring to men in the way of social order 
will never come to them again, simply because the 
revolutionary era is between us and the ages of 
paternalism, and because paternalism cannot help 
men out of the real difficulties with which they 
are obliged to contend. The world goes forward, 
and the time of feudalism cannot be reproduced, 



252 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

whatever advantages it may have had over the 
present. Democracy must now have its day ; and 
out of it will grow something better and truer, if 
men will deal with it in the spirit of hope and 
faith. 

The feudal idea, in practice, does not give the 
reins of government into the hands of the wisest 
and best, except by chance. There i-s no way of 
bringing the fittest men to the front so effectual 
as that of democracy, where all have a free oppor- 
tunity, and where the man with force and power 
can at once make his genius felt. Unfortunately 
for such a theory as Ruskin's, genius of any kind 
never confines itself to the aristocracy or to the 
privileged orders or even to the cultured classes. 
It is well enough that boys should be under a 
schoolmaster, but men should be self-reliant and 
capable of their own guidance. 

Ruskin's love of the picturesque has misled him 
in regard to the true character of feudalism. It 
was gorgeous in splendor, and it was knightly 
in temper; but baseness and corruption were 
underneath it all. It secured a strong govern- 
ment at the expense of all that is truly for the 
good of the people. It degraded the laborer that 
the knight might shine. It made quiet homes. 



EUSKIN. 253 

dotting everywhere the land, impossible, that 
the castle might stand forth stately and frown- 
ing. It elevated the baron, but it made the 
people serfs. It destroyed individual responsi- 
bility and effort, and it made the people cringing 
cowards. 

There is no need that feudalism should be 
brought back to us, or that the aristocratic class 
should be retained. The strong should guard the 
interests of the weak, for the sake of humanity. 
The poor do not need coddling, but they should 
be made to feel that they are men, and they 
should have a free opportunity for action. Real 
alienation of classes comes by the method Ruskin 
proposes, and not because of the growth of democ- 
racy. The repression fostered by feudalism has 
set class against class, and it has made liberty a 
name for violence. The temper of men's minds 
has so changed that any attempt to set class over 
class, whether it be on the basis of birth, wealth, 
or genius, is at once, and justly, the signal for re- 
bellion. It is only by the development of the indi- 
vidual that the race is now to be advanced. Class 
cannot be made to yield obedience to class, or one 
individual to another, except by the aid of the 
spirit of sympathy and mutual helpfulness. It is 



254 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

not paternalism men now need, but brotherhood ; 
not a Napoleon or a Bismarck, but a Washington 
and a Bright. 

It is for sympathy and helpfulness Ruskin asks ; 
but always with the assumption that the working- 
man needs to be under the lead of some one wiser 
than himself. It is an assumption which is false 
from first to last, and which marks his theory as 
sadly impracticable. The social classes owe much 
to each other in the way of mutual confidence 
and helpfulness; but nothing is to be gained by 
assuming that one is superior to another. The 
wise man may teach the ignorant, but he has no 
right to command him. 

The purpose with which Ruskin writes on social 
subjects is always good; but his sympathy with 
medisevalism is the source of much error of opin- 
ion. All social changes are attended with evil 
results, as well as good ones ; and the growth of 
individualism has fostered its own vices and de- 
fects. No social state yet attained has answered 
to the demands of the ideal ; but democracy has 
in it all the promise of the future. 

As in the case of Rousseau, there is much in 
Ruskin which is right and very noble. He is too 
much a sentimentalist, however, to see the world 



EUSKiN. 255 

as it is or to deal with it in the spirit of rational 
reform. The nobility of his heart appears in all 
his theories, as well as in his anxious desire to 
make better the world for his fellows, who find it 
hard to deal with. Men will turn to him, as to 
Rousseau, for inspiration, but not for guidance and 
instruction. They will take counsel of his heart, 
but not of his head. They will listen to him as 
a prophet, but not as a law-maker and statesman. 
Though they accept not his theories, it will be 
well if the}' acquire his love and sympathy in 
their fulness. 

Every poet and artist is to be judged by that in 
which he has done the best, by that which has 
commanded the truest aspirations of his mind and 
the deepest affections of his heart. The test of 
the genius of such a man as Ruskin is not to be 
found in his errors about science, but in his 
Tightness of heart for humanity, and in his faith- 
fulness of eye for beauty. Some men give us the 
truth in abstract forms, as if it had no relation to 
us or ours. As they speak of it, it would seem to 
belong to the Medes and Persians or to the inhab- 
itants of Saturn, but not to anybody we have 
ever met in the streets, or had our hearts warmed 
to in the intercourse of life. There are others, 



256 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

with less knowledge of truth, it may be, who 
make it alive, give it meaning for us, relate it to 
our needs, rouse us to perceive it, and draw us 
into its love. Ruskin belongs to those who make 
the laws alive for us. He is one of the world's 
prophets and inspirers, who quicken us to better 
deeds, who start in us the deeper tides of faith. 
Even more truly, he may be called one of the 
world's lovers, rejoicing in all beauty, delighting 
in all affection. His heart is ever warm, his sym- 
pathy glowing and tender. Whatever his errors 
of opinion, whatever his failures in speculation, 
such a man makes the world better by his 
presence, and richer for his ministry to its higher 
life. His truth is of the spirit and not of the 
letter. 



VII. 

RusKiN is intensely religious, steadfastly of a 
believing mind. The doubts of the time have 
affected him less than any other great writer ; he 
retains much of the simplicity and conviction of 
his youth. In his early writings he was evangeli- 
cal in belief, accepting the Bible with sincere 
trust. The harsher doctrines of the evangelical 
creed never were received by him, for he has not 
in any of his writings looked at man or nature as 
alienated from God. In his later books he has 
shown a less hearty belief in the creed of his 
childhood, and he has manifested sympathy with 
the broader faith of his time. At no time, how- 
ever, has he been under the influence of theology 
or doctrinal statements of faith. His is the reli- 
gion of the spirit, of one who sincerely loves 
worship and praise, and whose soul is entranced 
by the visions of the Eternal. He revolts against 
a formal and perfunctory faith, as against conven- 
257 



258 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

tionalism in art, or unfeeling laws in political 
economy. 

His religion has been more simple and con- 
fiding than Browning's, more vigorous and em- 
phatic than Tennyson's, more restful and trusting 
than Carlyle's. It has seemed easier for him to 
believe than for any other man of genius since 
Wordsworth. He has the poet's childlike sincer- 
ity, wedded to his spirit of faithful interpretation. 
He believes broadly, with the generosity of a 
richly gifted nature, with enthusiasm and intense 
desire. He will not cramp his faith within the 
old limits, or deny to it the power to work with- 
out bonds and bounds. He believes that God was 
in the old times, but just as much he believes that 
God is in the life of all things now. 

Ruskin has been as trusting and believing to- 
wards the higher truths of religion as he has 
been towards the truths of man, nature, and art. 
To him, religion has not been a matter of form 
and tradition, but a living fact in man's relations 
to the Eternal, and a joyous acceptance of the 
divine law of love. Beauty of nature and delight 
of pure human conduct are alike manifestations 
of God, in his view. Sympathy with nature, 
when pure and elevated, and joy in the human 



RUSKIN. 259 

faculties, when life is loyal and loving, are truly 
religious and worshipful. 

Ruskin has held the doctrine of God's imma- 
nence in connection with faith in the Bible mira- 
cles. He believes that God manifests himself, not 
as unbroken law, but as advancing and immeasur- 
able life. To him, life is not for probation in 
the theological sense, but for education ; not to 
prepare us for heaven, but to give us culture 
in the higher disciplines of the soul. Our high- 
est task is to make ourselves true men and 
women, to serve God by being loyal to the life 
he has given us here. We are to make the 
earth a fit dwelling-place for God's children, and 
deal with them righteously and in a brotherly 
spirit; otherwise, all prayer and all worship are 
in vain. 

Holding to the Christian faith with a devout 
conviction, and as one who believes implicitly in 
its Heavenly Father, Ruskin has nothing of what 
Coleridge called " other-worldliness." He sees 
God in flowers and clouds and flaming sun, and in 
the faces of men. God dwells here, too; this 
earth is his shekinah, and this hour his eternity. 
Whatever men do that is loyal and true, in that 
they serve God. "All great art is praise," he 



260 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

says. The men who have painted the greatest 
pictures, those with soul and power in them, have 
done it on bended knees. In that spirit all men 
have worked, in whatever direction, Avho have 
done what it is most worthy to perform, and what 
will last through the time to come as still endur- 
ingly good for mankind. Not that Ruskin be- 
lieves in a formal and sanctimonious utterance of 
words, in some perfunctory manner, as the prayer 
and praise that is true worship. The man who 
feels himself mastered by a spirit he cannot and 
would not resist, a spirit that leads him to do his 
work with utter unconcern for all other results 
than that it shall be done truly and as best he 
can ; and who feels that in so working he is going 
forth with God to create anew the face of the 
earth in beauty, peace, and righteousness, he it is 
whose Avork is worship. Such work has greatness 
and glory in it ; it affects men with power and 
peace, it widens the trend of men's actions, and 
gives to their thoughts a more loyal cast. True 
living is true worship, Ruskin teaches ; the living 
that is daily adoration in word, thought, and deed, 
and brings its action up to the ways and manners 
of the skies. The angels he believes in, however, 
are those who dwell in the habitations of men, 



BUSKIN. 261 

and may be seen any day on their errands of 
mercy and faith. 

Ruskin is a critic of religion as well as of 
literature and art ; and he sees little good in that 
of the present time. He finds it shallow, unbe- 
lieving, and devoid of true spiritual insight. It 
covets material prosperity, it delights in the sem- 
blance of worship, at heart it is full of doubt and 
denial. Compared with his own sincere and 
unswerving faith, the religion of the time is 
feverish with unrest and melancholy with a dis- 
tempered spirit. Ruskin does not recognize, as 
he ought, however, that ours is a time of search 
and inquiry; that some ages, of which ours is one, 
are as John the Baptist wandering in the wilder- 
ness, unclothed of conventionalities, and feeding 
on the locusts and wild honey of nature, awaiting 
the advent of that new Master who is to bring in 
the fairer faith and the worthier worship. In the 
meantime, the great body of men are content 
with forms and feasts, with the shows of worship, 
and the buying and selling at the temple door. 
Ruskin will not be patient witli cant, with piety 
that is for the sake of loaves and fishes, or with 
religious teaching that makes a pretence of 
authority, but shows not the fruits of the Spirit 



262 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

in love of the poor and in the healing of the 
heart's wounds. Faith measures itself by con- 
duct and by the humility of lowly service. If it 
scorns the meanest of men, if it sets up any 
claim of authority except that of heart over 
heart, it has ceased to be faith. 

No other religious teacher of this century has 
taught more that is wholesomely inspiring and 
intrinsically religious. He cannot rightly be 
compared with any religious teacher contem- 
porary with him, but rather with such men as 
Hooker, Cud worth, and Jeremy Taylor. Freely 
as he has accepted Carlyle as his master, his 
spirit is too latitudinarian and too sympathetic to 
be drawn away of Carlyle' s semi-Calvinism. God 
revealed in the strong man, a doctrine so satisfac- 
tory to Carlyle, Ruskin finds also to have its 
elements of truth. He sees God not in power 
alone, but in beauty, love, and truth even more. 
He is no Calvinist of any type ; he cannot be- 
lieve that God is far removed in nature and 
in love from man, and will not believe that 
God is to save only a selected few. Carlyle 
has too far influenced him in his criticisms 
of the present time, and in his thought that 
religion has now suffered an eclipse. But the 



EUSKIN. 263 

currents of his faith run too deep and broad for 
any real lapse of it, or for any pessimism that sees 
the world abandoned of God. No, God is the life 
and light of all this world of beauty, truth, and 
love ; his sunshine is ever on and about it ; his 
spirit sustains and retains it, keeping it em- 
bosomed in realit3^ Its beauty shines out of his 
face ; its truth is the substance of his nature ; 
its love is the unfathomable depth of his heart's 
sympathy. Ruskin has not Tennyson's question- 
ing spirit or his attitude of doubt. He is relig- 
ious by intuition, by every pure purpose in his 
nature, and by the largest conclusions of his 
mind. If there is more faith in honest doubt 
than in half the creeds, it is a truth which has not 
been made known to him, and which he cannot 
accept. Science has not disturbed his faith as it 
has Tennyson's, or found in him so ready an 
acceptance of its doctrines. The evidence it 
offers is of a kind which he does not appreciate, 
and for which he has little capacity. Perhaps he 
has never made a wide-searching inquiry into 
the foundations of religious truth; and the whole 
trend of his mind is such that he is not disturbed 
by philosophical skepticism. He is too much a 
dogmatist to be overcome by any of that distrust 



264 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

which besets less positive natures, and which 
causes them to ask if their neighbor's creed may 
not be as good as theirs. If he has grown more 
tolerant with advancing years, he has not grown 
less positive. 

Browning is of closer kin to Ruskin in his 
religious attitude of mind than any other English 
author of the time. Ruskin believes through the 
moral nature, Browning through the intellectual. 
Browning finds in religion the grand consumma- 
tion of his philosophy, Ruskin the unfailing con- 
firmation of his ethics. Both alike accept the 
Christian faith with thorough conviction, not as a 
dogma and not as a tradition, but as a union of 
man's soul with the Infinite One in the sacrament 
of life. To them revelation is universal and un- 
failing, not exceptional and arbitrary. It is the 
never-ceasing activity of God, by which his nature 
consummates itself in the communion of rational 
beings. Ruskin has the more clearly penetrated 
the revelation made through nature ; Browning, 
that made through the instincts and experiences 
of individual men. For Ruskin, the aim of reli- 
gious development is the perfection of men in the 
common fellowship of love and right doing; for 
Browning, life flowers and fruits in the instincts 



KUSKIN. 265 

and insights of exceptional souls. The age and 
the country producing two such prophets of the 
higher faith can have suffered no real eclipse of 
religion. 

And yet the religion of the nineteenth century 
has become too rationalistic, too introspective, and 
too anxious for demonstration. In its demand 
for reasons, it has undermined the holy of holies ; 
in its craving for proof satisfactory to science, it 
has smitten the soul with a withering blight. 
Beauty is not seen through the aid of a treatise 
on aesthetics ; and faith does not live within the 
soul because we accept this demonstration or that. 
To all free and healthy natures religion comes 
surely and soundly, answering to an unfailing 
want, an imperative demand. Ruskin has done 
something to make us see it as a morning freshness 
and a noontide light, as health of heart and mind, 
and as right relations of man to man. We see 
God by living, and not by reasoning. We live by 
worship and righteousness, by rejoicing in all 
things which God has made to be, and by inward 
harmony with nature and man. All great living 
is praise. Religion is rightness of being ; worship 
is wholeness of nature. To love God is to love 
all pure things and thoughts the world contains ; 



266 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

to serve him is to serve all his creatures great and 
small. To define God, the three words life, light, 
and love alone are needed. 



Had Rusldn practised more of concentration, it 
would have been better for his works and for his 
reputation. He has written so much that but few 
persons, in these days of many books, can afford 
to read him as a whole. His books must undergo 
a sifting, and a few only can live. Even now, the 
"Modern Painters," "Stones of Venice," and 
" Seven Lamps of Architecture " represent Ruskin 
to the reading world, though they do not contain 
his best or most matured thought. 

The majority of readers will take Ruskin in 
bits. They will find here and there in his pages 
that which they can love, which appeals to them 
as do few other printed pages, and these para- 
graphs they will cherish fondly and read often. 
The general reader, even among persons of cul- 
ture, knows little of art in that intimate way in 
which Ruskin has written of it, and cannot rightly 
enjoy his criticisms of this kind. His chapters on 
morals and on religion, and on the beauties of 



KUSKIK. 267 

nature, will be read with ever-increasing apprecia- 
tion and delight. Could they be selected from 
the body of his works and brought together in a 
compact and systematic form, they would make a 
far deeper impression on the world than they do 
now. This it might not be best to do, for then 
the reader would fail to realize, as Ruskin has 
taught, the intimate relations, and constant sus- 
taining power in mutual help, of art, morals, reli- 
gion, nature, and man. 

Like Coleridge and like Rousseau, Ruskin will 
have an influence on the course of thought and 
sentiment not at all to be measured by the number 
of his readers or by the general acceptance of his 
theories. He is an inspirer of thought rather 
than a great thinker, creating a tendency and an 
atmosphere which shall have infused themselves 
throughout human culture. Others will repeat 
his ideas in new forms, impress them on fresh 
lines of research, apply them to other subjects of 
pressing interest, until his thought about art shall 
have pervaded the growing life of the world. In 
reality this is the higjiest fame and the most 
enduring success, to have silently affected the 
deeper issues of thought and conduct. 



IV. 

BROWNING. 



The strength of poetry is in its tlioiight, not in its form ; and wifh great 
lyrists, their music is always secondary, and their substance of saying, 
primary, — so much so, that they will even daringly and wilfully leave a 
syllable or two rough, or even mean, and avoid a perfect rhythm or 
sAveetness, rather than let the reader's mind be drawn aAvay to lean too 
definitely on sound. — HusJcin. 

If there is any great quality more perceptible than another in Mr. 
Browning's intellect, it is his decisive and incisive faculty of thought, 
his sureness and intensity of perception, his rapid and trenchant resolu- 
tion of aim. To charge him with ohscurit)/ is about as accurate as to 
call Lynceus purblind, or complain of the slowness of the telegrax)h wire. 
He is something too much the reverse of obscure ; he is too brilliant and 
subtle for the ready reader of a ready writer to follow with any certainty 
the track of intelligence which moves with such incessant rapidity. — 
Swinburne. 

It is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound and yet 
simple, and yet beautiful iu its vigor, I know nothing that is so affecting, 
nothing in any book I have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that "I 
was so young — I had no mother." I know no love like it, no passion 
like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception like it. — 
Dickens. 

1 LOOK up to Browning as one of the very few men known to me by 
their works who, with most cordial energy and invincible resolution, 
have lived thoroughly throughout the whole of their being, to the utter- 
most verge of all their capacities, in his case ti'uly colossal ; lived and 
wrought thoroughly in sense and soul and intellect. —Jawzes Thompson. 

Than whom a mightier master never 

Touch'd the deep chords of hidden things; 
Nor error did from truth dissever 

With keener glance; nor make endeavor 
To rise on bolder wings 
In those high regions of the soul 
"Where Thought itself grows dim with awe. 

— Ou'en Meredith. 



lY. 

BROWNING. 

Wheneyee, there is a growth of idealism, liter- 
ature feels the new life which it creates. Most of 
the great literary periods have been associated 
with a revival of this philosophy in some one of 
its manj^ forms. There are an impulse, an energy, 
and a largeness of conception ii\ what it has to 
teach, and in the life it produces, which are con- 
ducive to literary creation. Whatever its limita- 
tions, it affects the imagination and the emotions, 
gives the largest conceptions of nature and man, 
and kindles the soul with the fire of renewing life. 

Idealism is the philosophy of hope and of the 
future. It clings not to the low earth, but em- 
braces the circle of the heavens. Thought it 
raises to the place of supreme arbiter in the realm 
of human experience. It gives the imagination 
objects worthy of its creative vision, and it lifts 
271 



272 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the whole mind with an exalted sense of its rela- 
tions to Absolute Being. 

It is not fancy, but reality, in which idealism 
finds its life and its reason for being. It creates 
a love of nature, it awakens the spirit of human- 
ity, and it draws man into ardent sympathy with 
the world about him. Wherever the idealist goes 
there are voices to be heard chanting the glory 
and the beauty of creation. He finds everywhere 
a life responsive to his own, that reveals to him 
truth and accords to him peace. 

The idealist is the only true realist. He it is 
who takes the world as an actuality, and who 
stands before it with reverence and awe, because 
of the life made known in every leaf and star and 
man. He reads nature with the whole of his 
mind, and all the pages of her book are bound 
together into one work for his delight. He does 
not accept this and reject that, but he peruses all 
her truths in search of the light which he is sure 
they contain for him. 

Literature has gained from the idealist its joy, 
its beauty, and its fragrance. When it glows with 
eternal freshness and vigor there his hand is seen 
and the throbbing of his heart is felt. He it is 
who interprets the ideas after which the creative 



BKOWNING. 273 

process proceeds, making it live anew in poem, 
essay, or romance. __ 

The revival of idealism in Germany, in the 
middle of the eighteenth century, had a remark- 
able influence on English literature. It gave us 
Wordsworth and Coleridge in the place of Pope 
and Gray. It brought nature, imagination, feel- 
ing, and the real world into literature. It gave 
to the real world a capacity to touch men with its 
freshness, beauty, and living significance. There 
came with it a conviction that, if we come into 
true sympathy with the natural world, we stand 
face to face with what is real. All worlds are in 
fact one. They are unified by an immeasurable 
and inexhaustible life flowing through them all. 
They therefore reflect, and supplement, and in- 
terpret one another. The world of matter is a 
vision of the world of mind. When we have 
solved the problem of human thought we have 
discovered the nature of God. 

Three men whose names occupy conspicuous 
places in recent English literature have repre- 
sented the later effects of German idealism. 
These are Carlyle, Emerson, and BrowiiLng, ideal- 
ists all, but in a manner to bring out the emphatic 
individuality which they each exhibited. Their 



274 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

marked individuality and independent spirit, the 
result in no small measure of tlieir idealism, are 
shown on every page wliicli they have written. 
In this group of men Carlyle is the greatest 
. genius, Emerson the noblest personality, and 
LJBrQwning the most original interpreter of life. 
[Carlyle deals with history in its largest rela- 
tions and purposes ; frowning with the individ- 
ual man as a soul distinct and unique, and 
Emerson with the moral law as applied alike to 
individuals and nations. The first exalts intellect 
and force, the second feeling and spiritual insight, 
the third conscience and intuition. Browning 
has the least of doubt, Emerson the least of prac- 
tical sense, and Carlyle the least of moral stabil- 
ity. Emerson writes meditations concerning the 
ethical life, Browning soliloquizes of the individ- 
ual soul as subjected to life's manifold experiences, 
and Carlyle rhaj^jsodizes about the epical move- 
ments of mankind. In Carlyle the great charac- 
teristic is strength, in Emerson sweetness, and in 
Browning light. It is Emerson we love, Brown- 
ing we accept as a master, and Carlyle we rever- 
ence for his genius. 

To these men idealism came as a creative 
impulse, enlarging their thoughts, giving new 



BEOWXIXG. 275 

energy to imagination, and making life seem to 
tliem something grand and sacred. It made tliem 
eager students of the world about them, and it 
made them feel that in sympathy with it their 
own lives were exalted and made worthy of the 
priesthood of letters. They spoke out of a deep 
and sincere purpose, not only to the pleasing, but 
to the edification of men. They had no mood in 
wdiich they desired to toy with life or to paint it 
in gaudy colors. They were sincere, eager to 
know the truth, and lovers of their fellows. 

It was the secret of life these men sought. 
They were not troubadours, but pilgrims. They 
came not to sing a song or to twang a harp, but 
to chant the measure of life's hymn. It was what 
they spoke, and not how, which concerned them. 
With a great thought enrapturing heart and 
mind, they spoke as men burdened with it, anx- 
ious only that the message they bore might be 
heard of men. 

These men were alike in this, that they were 
prophets more than artists. With one accord 
they counted it unworthy that life should have no 
higher than the artist's aim. They spoke because 
of what they had to say, and not for the sake of 
the manner of the saying. Whatever art they 



276 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

made use of was the result of tlieir faith in the 
message they delivered. Obscure they were, and 
difficult to read with ease and pleasure, because 
they dealt with life at first hand. A style in- 
volved and intricate they fell into without pur- 
pose, because they were not stylists, and because 
they would unburden the mind of " thoughts too 
deep for words." There is no lack of force and 
fire, no want of beauty and breadth, in what they 
have written. In their want of art is an art full 
of power and majesty. It is the sea in its glory, 
the storm in its might, the mountain in its tower- 
ing splendor, the heavens in their unutterable 
depths, which made tlie style of these men ; they 
came in close contact with nature's beauty and 
sublimity. Their style has caught the grace of 
life and death, of pain and sorrow, of joy and high 
thoughts, and of all that ushers in the worth and 
the wonder of man's being. 

These men have written boohs of the soul. 
Their books are heart confessions and revelations 
of the mind. What they lived we know from 
what they have written. It was no idle word 
they spoke, but what they had seen, heard, and 
felt. When we read the books of either of these 
men, we feel we sit at the feet of a master, who 



BROWNING. 277 

knows whereof lie speaks. They speak with the 
words of one who has had all a man's experience. 
In their books we learn to know ourselves ; there 
we come face to face with our own souls. 

Of these men one only yet remains. In an age 
when on every wind comes borne the cry of real- 
ism, he remains faithful to the spirit of idealism. 
He finds the soul to be that which transcends all 
other facts and laws.. To him it is the one 
supreme fact. That is the one phenomenon he 
desires to study. To an investigation of it, in all 
its many phases, he has devoted his life. He has 
been as eager to look into the history of a soul as 
the scientist is to investigate the history of a star 
or an earth-worm. He has felt that the individual 
man is worth more than any other fact or law, 
that he is the one unique phenomenon the world 
presents, and that he alone gives the inquirer an 
adequate object of thought. There are in the 
soul heights, and depths, and glories, and ex- 
panses of out-reaching mystery, which Browning 
has seen with eyes wonder-set and a mind zealous 
to know the truth. 

Browning has exerted an influence on literature 
as fresh and suggestive as that of Carlyle or 
Emerson. He has the same unique power, he has 



278 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the same subtle gift of insight, and he has the 
same intensity of conviction which those men pos- 
sessed. He is an original force in literature, never 
an imitator, but one to arouse and to stimulate all 
who come after him. He stands apart by himself 
as a poet. He had no forerunner, and he is likely 
to have no successor. 

The last of the men directly affected by the 
incoming of German idealism. Browning has suf- 
fered nothing of its better spirit to be lost. To 
him it has given the same deep-searching sense of 
the wonder of life as to those who went before 
him. He, too, has. been environed by mj^stery 
and an infinite life. The world has revealed 
itself to him with a freshness as of spring, and 
with a joy as of flowers blooming on sunny slopes. 



I. 

Browxixg's father was a man of scholarly 
tastes, a lover of poetry, and a maker of verses. 
The poet's education was received almost wholly 
at home and in Continental travel. He went 
early to Italy, spent a long time there as a young 
man, studied thoroughly its history, institutions, 
and art products, and mingled with all classes of 
the people. 

Browning began as a child to write verses, 
though this may be said of almost every poet. At 
the age of twelve he had poetry enough written 
to make a volume, which was read by the Misses 
Flower, friends of his famil}^, the younger of 
whom was afterwards known as Sarah Flower 
Adams. Tliese sisters saw the promise there was 
in the boy, and the older of them sent his poems 
to William Johnson Fox, who was kind enough 
not to print them, but praised them heartily. 

279 



280 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

These first poems were written under tne influ- 
ence of Byron, and Fox feared that the young 
poet's love of melody and form would be a serious 
hindrance to genuine accomplishment. He was 
not destined, however, to be led astray by the 
music of fair words. 

At the age of thirteen chance threw in his way 
some of the writings of Shelley, and new poetic 
ardor and capacity were aroused in the young 
poet. After a long search, and many inquiries of 
booksellers, all the poems of Shelley were found, 
with one exception then in their first edition ; and 
with these were bought three small volumes by 
John Keats, tlien also unread by lovers of poetry. 
These books were eagerly read, and they worked 
a "change into something new and strange," as 
they took hold of the mind of this ardent lad. 
His old work became distasteful, while many 
and vast jooetic projects began to exercise his 
genius. Not Byron, and not Shelley, was 
destined to be his poetic master, for he was to 
make a path of his own in poetry, and to work 
in a manner strikingly personal and original. 

At the age of twenty. Browning produced his 
" Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession,"' which 
was printed for him by one of the members of his 



BEOWNIXG. 281 

family. He afterwards wished to forget it, declar- 
ing it to have been written in pursuance of a 
foolish plan he had forgotten or had no wish to 
remember. It was published anonymously, and 
only the genuine promise it contained led to its 
being favorably received by such men as Fox, 
Mill, and Forster. Miss Flower revealed the 
authorship to Fox, who reviewed it with generous 
warmth and appreciation. He said it gave him 
the thrill, and laid hold of him with the power, 
the sensation of which had never yet failed him 
as a test of genius in the writer capable of pro- 
ducing it. In after years Dante Rossetti found 
the poem in the British Museum and copied all 
its pages, so much was he impressed by it. 

At the age of twenty-three. Browning produced 
his "Paracelsus," which gave Harriet Martineau 
an " unbounded expectation " of the poet's genius. 
Its conception was novel, and its execution dis- 
played many beauties. It did not attract much 
attention, but it caused Macready to suggest to 
Browning the production of a drama. This led 
the poet to the writing of those works in which 
he has made the nearest approach to the power 
of the old dramatists which English literature has 
shown in a century. His plays were produced 



282 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

on the stage with a fair degree of success, but 
from various causes they were soon removed. 

Browning won the approbation of several of 
the best critics by his earlier poems, but he was 
not read beyond a small circle of thoughtful 
persons. In 1841 a leading London publisher 
offered to bring out his poems in a cheap form, 
similar to that in which he was then issuing the 
" Elizabethan Dramatists." They accordingly ap- 
peared in a series of sixteen-page, double-column 
pampldets, eight numbers being published in all. 
In his preface he says that one of his plays had 
been applauded b}^ a pitful of good-natured 
people, and that he hoped the cheap form of the 
little books would again help him to " a sort of pit- 
audience." It is to be doubted if he was largely 
read, however, even in this form, for his poetry 
has few of the elements of popularity. He gave 
to his booklets the name of " Bells and Pome- 
granates," and they contained much of his best 
poetry. 

Soon after the publication of the last of his 
"Bells and Pomegranates," in 1846, Browning 
married Elizabeth Barrett, under romantic circum- 
stances. She was already widely known as a 
poet, and she had long been a confirmed invalid. 



BROWNING. 283 

Immediately after tlieir marriage they went to 
Jtalj. Here they lived for fifteen years, produc- 
ing poems side by side, until Mrs. Browning's 
death, in 1861. Their summers were spent in 
Florence, and their winters in Rome, with an 
occasional Adsit to England. 

Since the death of his wife Browning has lived 
in London, devoting himself with zeal and fresh- 
ness to his poetic work. He has written more in 
quantity than any other English poet, so prolific 
has been his genius. Originality and profound 
thoughtfulness have mainly characterized his 
poetry. Read onh^ by a few persons, those who 
come to know him intimately in his writings 
regard him with devout admiration.* No other 
poet has been more keenly studied in his life- 
time, or has won to himself a more ardent circle 
of personal disciples. 

* Browning's poetry is not more widely read at the present 
time because of the expensive form in which his works are pub- 
lished. On the whole, the edition of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
in seven volumes, is the best, the cheapest, and the most con- 
venient ; but this does not include " Jocoseria" and ^'Ferish- 
tali's Fancies." It is a pity his works are not to be had in two 
volumes, at a cost not exceeding three dollars. A one-volume 
edition, containing all the short poems and dramas, and three 
or four of the long poems, would greatly help in making Brown- 
ing known to the reading public. 



284 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

In person Browning is small, yet firmly built 
and active. If the portraits of him which have 
been published do not belie him, he has little of 
the conventional look of the poet, but rather that 
of a successful man of business. Bayard Taylor 
met the poet in London, in 1851, and said he was 
received with "great cordiality." He also de- 
scribed " his lively, cheerful manner, quick voice, 
and perfect self-possession," and said that his 
" dark hair was already streaked with gray about 
the temples. His complexion was fair, with per- 
haps the faintest olive tinge, eyes large, clear, and 
gray, nose strong and well cut, mouth full and 
rather broad, and chin pointed, though not promi- 
nent. His forehead broadened rapidly upwards 
from the outer angle of the eyes, slightly retreat- 
ing. The strong individuality which marks his 
poetry was expressed not only in his face and 
head, but in his whole demeanor. He was about 
the medium height, and his movements expressed 
a combination of vigor and elasticity." In 1858 
Havv-thorne met Browning several times; and on 
one occasion he described him as being " very 
genial and full of life," and said that ''his conver- 
sation has the effervescent aroma which you can- 
not catch, even if you get the very words that 



BROWNING. 285 

seem to be imbued with it." Again he said: 
"Browning's nonsense is of a very genuine and 
excellent quality, the true babble and efferves- 
cence of a bright and powerful mind ; and he lets 
it play among his friends with the faith and sim- 
plicity of a child." "In conversation," said the 
less genial Harriet Martineau, " no speaker could 
be more absolutely clear and purpose-like. He 
was full of good sense and fine feeling, amidst 
occasional irritability ; full, also, of fun and harm- 
less satire, with some little affectations which were 
as droll as anything he said." Another account of 
him gives a more sympathetic description of his 
personal gifts : " Browning's conversation is like 
the poetry of Chaucer, or like his own simplified 
and made transparent. His countenance is so full 
of vigor, freshness, and refined power, that it 
seems impossible to think that he can ever grow 
old. His poetry is subtle, passionate, and pro- 
found; but he himself is simple, natural, and 
playful. He has the repose of a man who has 
lived much in the open air, with no nervous un- 
easiness, and no unhealthy self-consciousness." 
Sydney Dobell described the poet as "dark in 
hair, eyebroAV, and luxuriant beard, as a Spaniard 
or Portuguese, which he very much resembles. 



286 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

A fine, large, and expansible eye, and a mouth not 
exactly poetic but wonderful for its facility, arrest 
you at once." 

These descriptions may be taken for what they 
are worth ; for they cannot be supposed to let us 
into the personality of Browning, nor do they give 
us a clear understanding of his character. The 
face of a man, the color of his hair and eyes, and 
the manner of his speech are not infallible guides 
to his intellectual and emotional nature. These 
descriptions are but surface indications at the best, 
and are mainly of interest as showing the nature 
of the impression made by the poet on other men 
of genius. Browning is in his works, which are 
the only true portrait and description of him we 
can have ; for in them his inmost life is revealed 
as in the case of few other authors. It is not the 
physical configuration which we wish to know, 
though knowing that may give us a superficial 
satisfaction ; but the man as he is in himself, as a 
thinker, and as an artist. Such an account of him 
was that given by Landor, who looked into the 
poet's nature, and made known what was there : — 

" Browning, since Chaucer was alive and hale, 
Ko man hath Avalked along our road with step 
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
So varied in discourse." 



. BEOWNIXG. 287 

Not less salient and striking is the portrait drawn 
by a younger poet, who has seen in Browning his 
true character as a poet-pilgrim, or one who climbs 
the mount of song to reach the heavenly city 
which rests thereon : — 

" Bearded like some strong shipman, with a beam 
Of gray orbs glancing upward at the sky." 

The outer man reflects the inner man in this por- 
trait, painted by Robert Buchanan; but Alfred 
Domett, his long-time and fast friend, looks at him 
as a bard, and at his special mission as a poet, 
when he briefly singles Browning out from all the 
other poets of his time, and calls him the 

" Subtlest assertor of the Soul in song." 

Browning is manly and masculine, full of energy 
and life, and wide-awake to every phase of being 
about him. He has the tenderness of great and 
self-sustained strength, and he has the capacity for 
repose which is to be seen in the most truly mas- 
culine natures. He has what Lamb called a 
"manly relish for life," joy in its every capacity, 
and an eager purpose to read its secrets out to the 
end. His personality is distinct in its kind, indi- 
vidual and not typical ; and yet it is endowed with 
an electric impressiveness, and with a vast power 



288 POETS AND PKOBLEMS. 

for stamping itself on other minds. Whoever 
orucje knows him, as a man or in his books, will 
henceforth carry the birthmark of his regenerating 
influence. He is not dainty or sentimental, but 
full of noble impulses, overflowing with sympathy, 
and gifted with geniality, robustness, and vitality. 
He has lived in the whole of his being, and he has 
poured out the manifold riches of his nature with- 
out measure. There is a completeness in his 
work, as of one who had left no corner of his 
being unoccupied. The mansion of his mind has 
all the rooms in use, while sun and air come into 
them in unstinted circulation. Work and play 
and joy are going forward in every one. 



II. 

In writing of Shelley, Browning says that to 
know truly the work of a subjective poet we must 
know his biography. **ln our approach to the 
poetry we necessarily approach the personality of 
the poet," he says of those who find their inspira- 
tion in their own ideals ; " in apprehending it we 
apprehend him, and certainly we cannot love it 
without loving him. Both for love's and for 
understanding's sake we desire to know him, and 
as readers of his poetry we must be readers of 
his biography also." Whether we regard Brown- 
ing as a subjective poet or no, it is largely true of 
him also, though not in so large a measure as of 
Shelley, that it is his life which affords the right 
interpretation of his poetry. With such force of 
life, and with such a dominating personality, is 
Browning present in his works, that we can only 
understand what is in his poetry by understanding 

289 



290 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

how he accepts life and its greatest experiences. 
As a single instance, his married life illustrates 
his love poems in a way which flashes new mean- 
ing and beauty into them for all his readers. 
r To those capable of appreciating them, noth- 
ing can give an ampler insight into Browning's 
character than his relations to his wife. The 
history of their affection has in it something of 
romance, but more of tenderness, repose, and 
common development. Literature presents no 
love scene, no romance of the affections, more 
noble and lofty than the married life of Robert 
Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. Theirs was a 
genuine human love; not^an allegory, as was that 
of Dante for Beatrice. \ Nor did their love gain 
its glory because Browning, in the manner of 
other poets, chose to idealize the object of his 
affections. It was the love of a great poet for a 
great poet, founded on a mutual faith and admira- 
tion, communion of sentiment, and the closest kin- 
ship in thought, feeling, and aspiration. Their 
affection was a great uplifting influence, in its 
awakening and sustaining power, to the genius of 
both these noble singers. Literature nowhere 
presents a purer or a higher conception of love 
than that to be found in the poetry of this wed- 



BROWNING. 291 

ded pair. Clean as liglit and clear as crystal was 

their affection, and such is love in all which they 

have written. No words are too high, no ideal 

too lofty, no music too purely passionate, for their 

expression of faith in love, and the life and vision 

"—1 
it gives to those who are worthy.' Remembering 

the history of their affection as it appears in such 

hints as we have of it in the letters of Mrs. 

Browning's friends, and in a few of her own, 

many of Browning's poems gain new charm for 

the reader. In the light of this knowledge it is 

not surprising that he makes love the agent of 

man's redemption and growth while on earth. No 

poems having love for their subject and motive 

are more suggestive or more inspiring in a real 

and helpful sense, and at the same time so infused 

with the power of transforming life into spiritual 

attainment. 

Elizabeth Barrett began to write poetry at an 

early age, and she published her first volume 

when seventeen. Imagination, aspiration, and 

sensibility marked her poetry, and a purpose to 

see and sing whatever life can give that is pure, 

good, and beautiful. At the age of twenty-seven, 

when just entering on her true career as a poet, 

she broke a blood-vessel on the lungs, and was 



292 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

brought close to death's door. For many years 
she Avas a confirmed invalid, seldom leaving her 
room. Confined to her books and to her pen she 
gave her life to them with enthusiasm and high 
resolve, turned them into ministers of joy and 
growth, and made her sick-bed the poet's throne 
of song. There were in her poetry a sympathy, 
a tenderness, and a depth of feeling, so true and 
genuine, and so free and fresh an outpouring of 
a woman's heart in wealth of high thought and 
sentiment, that she soon made for herself a place 
in tlie affections of many. 

■* When Browning first came to know Elizabeth 
jBarrett does not appear; but while she was an 
' invalid they met, and their acquaintance ripened 
into affection. She makes the poet in " Lady 
Geraldine's Courtship " read to the lady of his 
heart from the poetry of Wordsworth, Howitt, 
and Tennyson, — 

Or from Browning some Pomegranate, which, if cut deep down 

the middle, 
Shows a heart within blood-tinctm-ed, of a veined humanity. 

These lines were written two years before their 
marriage. At about the same time she wrote of 
him to an American correspondent as one she 
knew merely as a poet, but as a poet in whom she 



BEOWNIKG. 293 

had great faith. "Mr. Browning, with whom I 
have had some correspondence lately, is full of 
great intentions, the light of the future is in his 
forehead — also he will turn clear, I think, as he 
turns on ; he is a poet of posterity. I have full 
faith in him as a poet and prophet." 

Very slowly Elizabeth Barrett recovered, but 
when she was married she was still an invalid, 
seldom able to leave her father's house, and with 
little promise of being restored to health. Under 
these circumstances, it is not strange that her 
family objected to her marriage or that her father 
thought it a foolish adventure. If Miss Mitford ^ 
is to be believed, the marriage was clandestine, 
and the consequences feared by all her friends. { 
" I at Miss Barrett's wedding ! It was a runaway 
match. Never was I so much astonished. He 
prevailed on her to meet him at church, with only 
the two necessary witnesses. They went by rail [Jc^ v^^^^f^ 
to Southampton, crossed to Havre, up the Seine 
to Rouen, to Paris by railway. There they 
stayed a week. Happening to meet with Mrs. 
Jameson, she joined them in their journey to 
Pisa; and accordingly they travelled by dili- 
gence, by railway, by Rhone boat — anyhow — 
to Marseilles, thence took shipping to Leghorn, 



294 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

and then settled themselves at Pisa for six 
months. She says that she is very happy. 
God grant that it continue. I felt just exactly 
as if I had heard that Dr. Chambers had given 
her over, when I got the letter announcing the 
marriage, and found that she was about to cross 
to France. I never had an idea of her reaching 
Pisa alive." This account, exaggerated as it may 
probably be, seems to be in some degree con- 
firmed by her words to an English poet friend: 
*' Our plans were made up at the last in the 
utmost haste and agitation — precipitated beyond 
all intention." 

Whatever the facts about the marriage, love 
worked a surprising cure for the bodily ills, and 
it was not many months before Mrs. Browning 
was writing to America of the great change it 
had been to her " from the seclusion in one room, 
to liberty and Italy's sunshine in these two kinds 
— when for a resigned life I take up a happy 
one and reel under it with my head and my 
heart." At the same time she wrote : " I begin, 
some four months after the greatest event of my 
life, by telling you that I am well and happy, 
and meaning to get as strong in the bod}" by 
the help of this divine climate as I am in the 



BROWNING. 295 

spirit, so much has God granted me compensation. 
. . . My husband's name will prove to you that I 
have not left my vocation to the rhyming art in 
order to marry ; on the contrary we mean both of 
us to do a great deal of work, besides surprising 
the world by the spectacle of two poets coming 
together without quarrelling, wrangling, and 
calling names in lyrical measure. . . . We live 
here in the most secluded manner, eschewing 
English visitors, and reading ' Vasari ' and dream- 
ing dreams of Venice in the summer. ... If I 
get quite strong, I may cross the desert on a 
camel yet, and see Jerusalem. There's a dream 
for you; nothing is too high or too low for my 
dreams now." 

The new life of love and Italy seems almost to 
have intoxicated Mrs. Browning, giving her that 
new interest in life and that new courage which 
led almost to health. Always frail and fragile, 
however, she was watched and cared for by her 
poet husband with tenderest sympathy during the 
fifteen years remaining to her life. Four years 
after her marriage, as the first fruits of the new 
life she had gained, she published, in a new 
edition of her poems, the " Sonnets from the 
Portuguese." Under this disguise of pretended 



296 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

translation, as if her sonnets were too personal 
and too directly out of her own heart-experiences 
to appear as her own work, she told the history of 
her affection. The love of a true woman's heart, 
in all its slow questioning growth to assurance, 
and in its fulness of devotion, has never been so 
truly sung as here in this one great woman poet's 
sonnets. Their delicate thought and their pure 
sentiment give them a beauty of the truest kind, 
which pervades them like a delicate aroma. A 
woman's heart informs every word, and gives it 
whatever meaning and purpose it has to impart. 
If the incidents in the history of their love-mak- 
ing are not all recorded in the poem, the inner 
meaning of it is here for him to read who can. 
There can be no doubt that she expected soon to 
die, that love came to her a'^ a surprise, and that 
she found the peace and the rapture of it after 
much fear and hesitation. 

Their marriage had a profound influence on the 
poetry of both. It made that of Browning clearer 
for the time being, richer in its human sympa- 
thies, and more lyrical in its character. It gave 
to hers a stronger intellectual purpose, energy to 
grasp greater poetic problems, and a less delicate 
and dainty touch. There can be no doubt that she 



BROWNING. 297 

was confirmed in some of the worst of her poetic 
faults by his influence ; but, at the same time, 
her mind broadened, and her life became richer 
and healthier in its spiritual aims. The poetry 
of the one illustrates that of the other, as well 
before as after their marriage. Their theories of 
life, and their religious beliefs, were singularly in 
harmony. Both were idealists after the manner 
of Plato and Hegel, she receiving the direction of 
her thought from Greece, and he getting his from 
Germany. Both believed in Christianity as a 
revelation to the individual soul, and as the true 
guide to the highest spiritual development. If 
they had grown up in the same home, under the 
same influences and the same teachings, they 
could not have been more in harmony in their 
poetic and religious beliefs. The same faults and 
the same excellences appear in their poetry. 
Both could be musical and harmonious in verse, 
when they chose ; both despised technical forms 
and rules. In the poetry of each the leading ele- 
ment was one of philosophic thought, tempered 
by feeling, sentiment, and imagination. A high 
spiritual aim runs through all their work, and one 
that is of the same pattern and purpose in the 
poetry of each. 



298 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

The " Sonnets from tlie Portuguese," " Aurora 
Leigh," and "Casa Guidi Windows" testify on 
almost every page to the emotional and spiritual 
influence of Robert Browning. They have a 
more sustained power and healthiness of thought 
than are to be found in the poetry of Elizabeth 
Barrett ; and they show a heart at peace with the 
world and itself. Not less apparent is the influ- 
ence on Robert Browning of his married life. In 
the same year with the publication of the " Portu- 
guese Sonnets " appeared his " Christmas-Eve 
and Easter-Day," and five years later his " Men 
and Women." These are among the most reada- 
ble of his poems, the most religious and personal 
in their purpose and method, and the most fully 
surcharged with the sentiment and the passion of 
love. At the end of " Men and Women," in the 
" One Word More " which closes the volume, he 
addresses his wife in words of the noblest senti- 
ment and affection : — 

There tliey are, my fifty men and women, 
Naming me the fifty poems finished. 
Take them, Love, the book and me together. 
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. 

Then he sings of Rafael and the lady of his son- 
nets, this wedded pair preferring the sonnets to 



BROWNING. 299 

all the treasures of his wondrous art. Now he 
sings of Dante and his portrait of Beatrice, which 
is prized by these two more than his " Inferno." 
Rafael's sonnets and Dante's picture suggest 
what ? 

This : no artist lives and loves that longs not 

Once, and only once, and for One only, 

( Ah, the prize ! ) to find his love a language 

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — 

Using nature that's an art to others, 

Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. 

Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 

None but would forego his proper dowry, — 

Does he paint ? he fain would write a poem, — 

Does he write ? he fain would paint a picture, 

Put to proof art alien to the artist's. 

Once, and only once, and for One only. 

So to be the man and leave the artist, 

Save the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 

Yet he cannot make statues or pictures, only 

sing his poems ; but in the making of poems he 

paints or carves other men and women, who will 

tell her of himself, and become his tribute of 

affection. She has become to him his moon of 

poets, who shows one side of her nature to the 

world, but keeps the other for the poet of her 

heart : — 

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her. 



300 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

This, rather, is that of which he thinks: — 

This I say of me, but think of you, Love. 

This to you — yourself my moon of poets. 

Ah, but that's the world's side — there's the wonder — 

Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you. 

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you, 

Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 

But the best is when I glide from out them, 

Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, 

Come out on the other side, the novel 

Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of 

Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 

As Rafael painted his Madonnas he sang a song 

to his love ; and as Dante sang of the Inferno he 

drew an angel in the form of his Beatrice ; but 

Browning cannot do either ; he can only clasp his 

wife to his bosom : — 

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 
Oh, their Dante of the dread Infernos, 
Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, 
Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom. 

This noble tribute to his wife is surpassed in 
sweetness and pathos by those grand lines in 
which he invokes her presence as the inspiration 
of his muse, at the end of the first canto of the 
" Ring and the Book." Her memory was to him 
a benediction, as her presence had once been to 
him a joy ; and it was still to him an inspiration, 
as when she sat by his side writing poems : — 



BEOWNING. 301 

O lyric Love, half -angel and half -bird 

And all a wonder and a wild desire, — 

Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, 

Took sanctuary within the holier blue, 

And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — 

Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — 

When the first summons from the darkling earth 

Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, 

And bared them of their glory — to drop down. 

To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — 

This is the same voice ; can thy soul know change ? 

Hail, then, and hearken from the realms of help. 

Never may I commence my song, my due 

To God who best taught song by gift of thee. 

Except with bent head and beseeching hand — 

That still, despite the distance and the dark. 

What was, again may be ; some interchange 

Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought, 

Some benediction anciently thy smile : 

— Never conclude, but raising hand and head 

Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn 

For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, 

Their utmost up and on, — so blessing back 

In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home. 

Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud. 

Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall. 

Once more lie sings of his wife, this time in 
" Pacchiarotto and Other Poems." Now he calls 

^^^ The dearest poet I ever knew. 

Dearest and greatest and best to me. 

These poems separate themselves from love 
poetry in general by their sincerity and their 



802 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

manly tone of truth. Browning does not sing of 
love for effect, but because of the deep and tender 
experiences of his heart. He sings of his wife in 
strains as high in imagination, and as knightly 
with true devotion, as those in which other poets 
have paid tribute to the ideal creations of their 
muse. His faith in this true woman's heart, 
which he knew so well, has made him believe 
that there can be but one love of man and 
woman, and that such true love lasts on through 
eternity. 



III. 

Browning is so far a thinker that he has 
developed a theory of art and of its relations to 
the life of man. The object of art, as Browning 
has defined it, and as he has reduced it to prac- 
tice, is to give man a fit outlet for his nature in 
the direction of the Infinite. Art shows man his 
dependence on God, that communion with God is 
an absolute necessity of his nature; and it also 
teaches him that the perfection of earth is in its 
imperfection or in its capacity to direct the eyes 
of man from itself to the Absolute, in which man 
and nature alike have their source. " The whole 
poet's function," he says, is that "of beholding 
with an understanding keenness the universe, 
nature, and man, in their actual state of perfection 
in imperfection," or, in other words, " the whole 
poet's virtue " is that " of looking higher than any 
manifestation yet made of both beauty and good, 
in order to suggest from the utmost actual realiza- 
303 



304 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

tion of the one a corresponding capability in the 
other, and out of the calm, purity, and energy of 
nature to reconstitute and store up for the forth- 
coming stage of man's being a gift in repayment 
of that former gift, in which man's own thought 
and passion had been lavished by the poet on the 
else-incompleted magnificence of the sunrise, the 
else-uninterpreted mystery of the lake — so draw- 
ing out, lifting up, and assimilating this ideal of a 
future man, thus descried as possible, to the 
present reality of the poet's soul already arrived 
at the higher state of development, and still 
aspirant to elevate and extend itself in conformity 
with its still improving perceptions of, no longer 
the eventual Human, but the actual Divine." 

The development of a theory of art does not 
seem to be the true mission of the poet. He is to 
create artistic forms and influences, leaving it to 
the critic to draw from his work a theory of art. 
Yet how can the artist work if he does not un- 
derstand the laws of his art, if he has no clear 
conception of its purpose, and how that purpose 
is to work its effect on the mass of mankind? 
The artist must be accepted, therefore, as a true 
interpreter of art ; and he it is who is its lawgiver 
and prophet ; but he is such because he alone can 



BROWNING. 305 

produce the beautiful examples which make art a 
motive and an inspiration. 

The true critic goes to the works of the mas- 
ters, and from them draws forth the laws and the 
canons of art. He does this, except in matters 
wherein reason and nature must be the lawgivers ; 
and even then the soul with a seeing eye is the 
best interpreter of what nature and reason de- 
mand. That was the method of Lessing; that 
has been the method of Ruskin. The artist 
creates ; the critic judges. The very fact that the 
artist is not also a critic, that he is absorbed in 
and overpowered by his creative intuition, if an 
artist of an advancing and original genius, makes 
it impossible for him to judge of his own work as 
related to the whole body of art, and to the uni- 
versal laws on which art-creation rests. The man 
who is at once a critic and an artist gains in com- 
prehensiveness, but he loses in creative and artis- 
tic power. Using his poetry for the interpreta- 
tion of art and life, Browning has lost in poetic 
beauty and facility. He has not been in the 
highest sense an artist. Those who most read 
and admire him do so not because of his poetic 
merit, but because of his criticisms of life. 
They see in him a remarkable teacher and pro- 



806 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

phet, and a profound interpreter of the great 
problems of human existence. He is, however, a 
striking example of a poet who has written much 
that has high merit on purely poetic grounds, and 
who also has the gift of critical interpretation. 
He knows the meaning of art, and possesses as 
well its creative genius. 

The laws of art take new direction, and ac- 
quire a higher meaning, through the works of 
men of the highest genius, who determine for 
others the limits and the nature of their crea- 
tions. Especially does the man of genius in 
whom philosophic insight is united to artistic 
power become the critic and interpreter in the 
realms of art. The mere critic of theories may 
determine whether the artist has been faithful to 
certain technical requirements which he regards as 
of supreme importance ; but the spirit and the 
moral genius of art he cannot measure by any 
canons he employs. It is true that Browning is 
not so great a poet as he would have been had he 
been less philosophic ; but his poetic genius is of 
so high an order, that, combining with his other 
gifts, it makes him a true interpreter of the mean- 
ing and purpose of art. Just as Lessing is a 
truer guide than any professional critic, so Brown- 



BROWKIXG. 307 

in g IS a wortbier master in all wliicli concerns art 
than those who give it interpretation from a 
purely speculative point of Adew. It is this fact 
which gives so much interest, freshness, and 
weight to his artistic theories. 

Among the poets Browning has shown a 
remarkable insight into the nature of art ; and he 
has been a true interpreter of the artistic faculty 
in man. A careful study of his poems on the 
several arts will show that this judgment is not 
too high. In ''Pauline," " Sordello," "Popu- 
larity," " How it Strikes a Contemporary," " Two 
Poets of Croisic," and the epilogue to " Pacchi- 
arotto " his subject is the poet. " Abt Yogler " 
and other poems give to music a grand inter- 
pretation. Painting is the subject in "Andrea 
del Sarto," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "The Guardian 
Angel," " Old Pictures in Florence," and many 
other poems of an originality and suggestiveness 
not to be found in any contemporary poetry. 

Xature has the function, according to Brown- 
ing, of causing man to realize that earth does not 
in itself contain any sure satisfaction for his 
higher nature. Art especially, in all its forms, 
awakes in man desires and hopes which the 
spiritual life alone can satisfy. The true artist is 



308 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

ever learning that he cannot make his art express 
all there is in his soul to which he would give 
utterance. No form, however plastic ; no material, 
however transformable, can fully embody man's 
aspiration. Beyond whatever work we accom- 
plish is the unsatisfied ideal, calling us away 
from what has been done to what may yet be at- 
tained. Never on earth can desire find perfect 
fulfilment, or the ideal become complete reality. 

Goethe and Carlyle have taught us that we are 
to find in the work we accomplish the highest 
satisfaction and attainment life can afford. They 
say to us that the ultimate truth cannot be 
known to reason, conscience, or art ; but by work 
for and with one's fellow-men aid will come to us 
as a practical realization. Not what one believes 
is holy and sublime and true, or what one aspires 
to make the divine law of his life, is to be taken 
as the test of life ; but what one accomplishes of 
actual work for humanity. It is the work we 
actually perform that is to show us worthy or 
debased. Browning goes to the secret treasure- 
house of each man's nature, reveals what is con- 
tained therein, and says : Not so ; it is what one 
aspires to, the inmost hope and impulse of the 
soul, that is the test of life and its worth. 



BROWNING. 309 

'Tis not Mliat man does that exalts him, but what man 
would do. 

The object of life, in all its manifestations, is to 
show man that the true home of his soul is in the )v 
realms of the spirit, and that he is to use earth 
as a gymnasium or training-school in preparation 
for it. In so far as a man or a poet has seen this 
he is wise and a true artist. In life all else is 
insignificant in comparison with this one truth 
which the time-experience gives. 

Browning believes the artist may fall into two 
great errors, that of being contented with the 
earth as it is, and that of despising it as a means 
of growth. The artistic motive of many of his 
poems is one or the other of these errors. Para- 
celsus aimed at absolute knowledge and Aprile at 
infinite love, seeking to reach beyond what earth 
can do for us, and thus failing. Cleon describes 
Lazarus as a man who has seen the spiritual 
reality, and therefore finds all earthly motives 
unavailing to satisfy his nature. On the other 
hand, *' Easter-Day " presents the picture of 
a man who loved only earth, and who was 
therefore shut out from heaven and made to 
glut his soul on the sensual things he had 
loved. 



310 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

It is to art, more than to anything else, we are 
to look for the inculcation of this highest truth. 
Art turns the eyes of men away from the sensual, 
when it is true to its best self; and it creates 
aspirations which it is constantly seeking to 
gratify with the purest ideals. That much of 
the art of the world has been sensual in its origin 
and in its tendencies, Browning would admit ; but 
this fact does not at all invalidate his theory. 
The art which is satisfied with the present, and 
with a sensual interpretation of life, inevitably 
leads to a debasement of character, in the artist 
and in the public. 

Browning has described " the faultless painter," 
who did all his work according to the rules of art, 
whose lines were perfect and whose touch was 
sure ; and yet, whose work had not in it the 
living power of divinest truth. This painter 
compares his own work with that of Raphael, 
whose artistic errors were many, but who had 
"reached above and through his art" to that 
which is higher than any perfection of line and 
form. The faultless painter had worked for pay 
and place and praise, for the things of sense and 
of time ; and not that he might give to others the 



BROWNING. 311 

visions of his own soul, as warnings and lessons 
in the deepest things of eternity. The perfect 
art of Greece, Browning suggests in " Old Pic- 
tures in Florence," was perfect only because it 
set to itself a limit in physical beauty. The later 
artists are faultier because they strive with a 
higher ideal, aiming through their ruder work to 
embody a higher and a grander thought. Greek 
art sought the grace and the completeness of the 
present ; Christian art has aimed at the spiritual 
development of the future. 

Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature ? 

In both of such lower types are we 
Precisely because of our wider nature ! 

For time, theirs — ours, for eternity. 

The highest art is not that which reaches per- 
fection in any one direction, but that which turns 
our eyes above and beyond for something more 
than can be here attained. 

To-day's brief passion limits their range, > 

It seethes with the morrow for us and more. 
They are perfect — how else ? they shall never change: 

We are faulty — why not ? we have time in store. 
The Artificer's hand is not arrested 

With us — we are rough-hewn, nowise polished : 
They stand for our copy, and once invested 

With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished. 



812 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven — 

The better! what's come to perfection perishes. 
Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven. 

Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. 
Thyself shall afford the example, Giotto ! 

Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, 
Done at a stroke, was just (was it not ? ) " O!" 

The great Campanile is still to finish. 

In his "Abt Vogler," Browning has sung the 
same high thought in even finer measure and 
with nobler expression. The musician pours 
forth his feelings and his aspirations on the keys, 
but wishing the while that his music could take 
some visible form, could grow into a palace, or be 
put with glowing colors on canvas. Ravishing as 
the music was, it passes at once away, and it 
ceases to be more than a memory. In that very 
fact of its transitoriness is the superiority of 
music as an art; for the more intangible art is, 
the more fully does it accomplish its high purpose. 
\ The true mission of art is that it gives life to us, 
/ opens to us the door of higher spiritual attain- 
ment, and not that it produces some outward 
thing of beauty. The musician's palace of art 
endures in himself, because it has brought him 
closer to God, and to that true attainment where- 
in at last the soul realizes itself in the Infinitely 
Perfect. All true art teaches us that we shall 



BROWNIXG. 313 

in the future attain to what we desire, because we 
now see in vision, and long for, what cannot be 
here wrought into fulfilment : — 

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 

For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered or agonized ? 
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue 
thence ? 
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be 
prized ? 

Browning looks upon art as the agent of 
personality in man, as the means by which man 
works out his true destiny as an individual being. 
Its chief purpose should be moral and spiritual; 
in other words, the development of the soul into 
harmony with the Infinite. It helps man to 
express himself to his fellows, and it helps him to 
realize that which he himself is. If the art itself 
satisfies the desire of man's heart, then it turns 
into a curse. When it sends man to the Supreme 
Artist, it fulfils its mission. 

So often has Browning given expression to this 
theory of art in his poetry, there can be no doubt 
he entertains it with genuine conviction. When 
reduced to a prose statement, it is always possible 
that it will lose something of his own poetic 
charm and largeness of conception. He cannot 
have been disturbed because his theory of art was 



314 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

not in harmony with the prevailing one, however 
much it may have caused others to distrust his 
teaching. He is more in sympathy with the 
distinctly Christian conception of art, of the 
great Italian masters, than with the realistic 
theories of the present time. He does not find 
the motive of art, with Ruskin, in the interpreta- 
tion of nature or in the inculcation of morality, 
but in the soul's contact with the Infinite 
Beauty, which is the source and sustainment of 
all the beauty we can know. To Browning 
beauty is subjective, given in the soul by man's 
contact with God; to Euskin it is objective, 
and awakened by man's contact with outward 
beauty. 

It is man as a spiritual being who is always the 
motive and the inspiration of Browning's art; and 
this fact is to be kept constantly in mind in any 
attempt to understand his poetry. Ruskin sees 
in nature what is perfect in its kind, what is satis- 
fying to the present sesthetic and moral needs of 
man, what gives health and truth as we come 
rightly into sympathy with it. Browning be- 
lieves that nature is imperfect ; that if we stop 
with it, and are content with what it gives us, we 
are lost to all further development; and that it 



BROWNING. 315 

has no true purpose beyond tliat of awakening in 
us a desire for what is higher. 

There is a wholeness, as of the entire man 
speaking, in Browning's poetry, not to be found 
in that of any of his contemporaries. He does 
not live to be an artist, concentrating all his 
power on that one purpose and passion. Trying 
to live out the life God has given him to live, he 
finds it best to use that life as a poet, and in that 
way to reach and express himself to his fellow- 
men. He lives not for beauty alone ; for beauty 
is only one phase of life and the world. With 
that are joined love, truth, right, and nature. In 
man is the measure of all things to be found, for 
he takes all other things and experiences up into 
himself and makes them his own ; and Browning 
has had no other object as a poet than the inter- 
pretation of man. Of all poetic motives and 
sources of the beautiful, man is the highest, 
and he is the most worthy of the poet's aim 
and endeavor. 



lY. 

Bkowning is a poet who seems to defy classifi- 
cation, so mucli does he differ from all his con- 
temporaries. In his employment of the dramatic 
method, and in his love for psychologic analysis, 
he is able to touch hands with some of the poets 
working about him; but, on the whole, he pre- 
sents a unique figure in the literature of the 
present time. He has no sympathy with the 
love of melody which has been so prominent in 
English poetry during the last half-century. 

He knows and appreciates the value of the 
poetic art, and he knows how to bring out its 
finest effects ; but he has a feeling of disdain for 
it, after all. At least, he will not be cramped by 
it, or hold fast by its laws. He breaks over all 
bonds and makes his own methods. He depends 
on thought and sentiment for his poetic effects, 
and on the inner and more subtle qualities which 
816 



BEOWNIKG. 317 

he forces into his work. He seems not to believe 
that poetry consists in any special form given 
to language or in compliance with any technical 
requirements which must be absolutely obeyed. 

Browning has a perfect command over versifi- 
cation, when he chooses to employ it, and great 
richness of melody. He has a remarkable versa- 
tility in metre and rhythm, though he is reckless 
of rules and defiant of precedents in his artistic 
elaboration. Many of his shorter poems show 
that he has the gift of music when he chooses to 
use it ; but he prefers to give heed mainly to the 
content rather than to the form of his verse. 
Drawn to the rich harmonies of Keats and Shelley 
in early life, he seems to have been driven into 
revolt against what in time became the chief 
characteristic of every petty versifier. Deliber- 
ately he refused to go with the multitude in their 
efforts to turn poetry into a matter of rhythm 
and fine-sounding words. As he suggests in " At 
the Mermaid," he made it his purpose to "sow 
song-sedition," and " a schism in verse provoke." 
At the same time it is to-be noted, in his justifica- 
tion, that his subjects are not usually adapted 
in any large degree to musical treatment. In 
"Pauline" are two lines which will apply to 



318 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

his own work, and they explain his method of 

writing : — 

So I will sing on fast as fancies come ; 
Rudely, the verse being as tlie mood it paints. 

His thoughtful and deep-searching way of 
looking at life does not adapt itself to smooth- 
flowing verse ; but the stormy and passionate 
life he studies most of all needs a method of 
interpretation suited to its own characteristics. 
As he does not sing of balmy, sunny, and happy 
days in June, no jingling and joy-conveying verse 
will answer to his needs. 

His style is his own, the natural way of expres- 
sion with him. He says straight-out the thought 
which is in his mind, in the manner in which it 
first presents itself to him. He is full, however, 
of recondite and subtle allusions, a mere glance 
and then on, that require the fullest knowledge 
to follow, and the quickest apprehension to get 
the full bearing and meaning thereof. His keen, 
swift mind eludes us without the closest attention. 
There are vigor, robustness, and a manhood of the 
most strenuous kind in his verse. He does not 
resort to dainty devices, after the manner of 
Tennyson; he indulges in no idle conceits: but 
he has a strong man's insistence on strong things. 



BEOWNING. 319 

He is in every fibre of his nature moral, clean, 
and pure; and such he ever is in his verse. In 
being a strong man he does not find it necessary 
to be coarse, brutal, or sensual. He is rugged; 
but because he speaks plainly and clearly, and 
with purpose to say precisely what he means. 
Nothing appears in his verse merely for effect 
and ornament ; but whatever is there has a pur- 
pose and a fresh thought underlying. He hates 
all pretentious and showy work, and loves all 
that is honest and sincere. 

Browning has much to say ; but his manner of 
saying it is often wanting in artistic beauty and 
finish. " I only wish he would atticise a little," 
was the discerning expression of Landor. " Few 
of the Athenians had such a quarry on their 
property, but they constructed better roads for 
the conveyance of the material." He lacks in 
artistic power, and in the capacity to give a com- 
pleted form to his poetry. He is obscure, and 
hard to understand, demanding the closest atten- 
tion of his reader, and often requiring long study 
in order to reach his meaning. He delights in 
parentheses, always and everywhere an abomina- 
tion; he indulges in frequent excursions into 
other subjects than that which he has under 



320 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

consideration, much to the perplexity of his 
readers, and he makes abrupt transitions, fre- 
quent and almost impossible to bridge over. 
Then, in his monodramatic poems, he gives no 
outside clew to the speaker, his circumstances, 
and his attitude of mind. In his simple tales 
from Greek and Scandinavian mythology, Wil- 
liam Morris presents an argument in prose, and 
thus gives the reader a full understanding of the 
situation at the beginning. Browning leaves his 
readers to find their own bearings under circum- 
stances which make it doubtful if the journey will 
repay the trouble it will cost. His situations are 
so obscure, so subtly psychological in their impli- 
cations, and so out of the reach of ordinary 
experiences, that it is difficult to find a starting- 
point for many of his poems. His literary, his- 
torical, and biographical allusions are frequently 
of the minutest kind, and such as can come 
within the reading and memory of but few per- 
sons. This adds to the difficulty of finding the 
place whence he departs ; but even when the sub- 
ject is one within the acquaintance of ever}^ per- 
son, the obscurity seems not much to be lessened. 
He deals with those experiences of men which lie 
within the inmost recesses of the soul. He loves 



BEOTTNIKG. 321 

what is odd, grotesque, morbid, and quaint. His 
purpose seems to be to analyze tbe strange and 
peculiar tj^pes of life, which illustrate the more 
obscure and startling phases of man's nature. 
Corruption of heart, hypocrisy, fanaticism, and 
formality he portrays with singular fidelity ; and 
with a remarkable faithfulness to the conditions, 
motives, and circumstances under which they 
appear. 

Browning's poetry is often harsh in manner, 
wanting in melody, and rough in rhyme and 
metre. He introduces uncouth and distracting 
rhymes, and he violates the law of melody when 
it can only be to the serious hurt of his verse. 
Yet he says, in one of his prefaces : " I do not 
apprehend any more charges of being wilfully 
obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely 
harsh." What seems to be affectation is little 
more than loyalty to his own nature and an 
exaggerated insistence on thought as opposed to 
melody. He is sometimes smoother and some- 
times rougher, but the same characteristics have 
been in his poetry from first to last. In the most 
harmonious of his verses he is an intellectual 
gymnast, leaping from thought to thought, and 
demanding the utmost agility in the reader to 



322 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

follow his movements. In his most obscure and 
least musical poems there is yet great freshness 
and richness of thought, a swift movement and 
harmony of purpose, with a true outlining and 
development of character. 

What the poet needs is life, a life ampler and 
nobler than is possessed by other men. In so far 
as he has made his own life poetic with heroism 
and nobility of sentiment has he the power to 
make other men realize the beauty of the world, 
and know that they walk through it day by day. 
Unless there is that in him which is greater than 
the sunset and its glory, he cannot make other 
men see its tinted beauty and its delight of 
coloring. This, at least, is the impulse and the 
thought which run through all Browning's poetry, 
giving purpose, color, and strength to it. He 
does not sing for the sake of the song, but that he 
may give life an impulse and a meaning impres- 
sive and inspiring. 

Bidding defiance to the technical functions of 
poetry. Browning provides a remedy in the intrin- 
sic richness of his themes or in the wealth of their 
spiritual suggestiveness. If not the babbling of 
brooks to rhythmic cadence, as they leap over 
stone after stone in harmonious flow of their 



BROWKING. 323 

waters, his poetry shows the tidal movement of 
the ocean in obedience to higher attractions. His 
poetry is like the strong and resistless force of a 
great river, carrying on its bosom mighty ships 
and many a smaller craft. There is a trend and 
power to it as of a planet wheeling on its way 
through mid regions of space, not fuming and 
fretful, but commanding and triumphant. It has 
volume and mass, and the might of unconquerable 
certainties. 

As a poet. Browning has reserve and reticence, 
willingness to bide his time, and the confidence of 
a perfectly balanced and natural activity of his 
whole mind ; but, when he moves forward to what 
he believes in, there is a winged sweep of thought 
which exhausts every power of the reader to follow. 

The art of Browning is Gothic in spirit, full of 
soaring aspiration, wide-varied in its directions of 
impulse, and yet holding grandly and sublimely 
to one main purpose. The outreaching of life 
towards the Infinite, taking many directions, and 
leading to endless forms of tragedy and comedy, 
is the burden of his poetry. There is symmetry 
in it, and yet there is endless variety. Multiplied 
differences abound, and yet the whole consents in 
a beautiful and majestic harmony of structure. 



324 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

Its whole expression is that of life and aspiration, 
bidding defiance to change and decay, passionate 
in endeavor, irrepressible in search and longing, 
and smitten with a yearning to see every beauty 
and to taste every joy life affords. 

Like Dante, Browning's greatness as an artist 
lies in his majestic and compassionate interpreta- 
tion of the joy and the suffering, the comedy and 
the tragedy of life, and on a grand scale. He lays 
hold of life in the same serious manner as that 
which we see in Dante, though he is not so sad of 
countenance or renunciant of heart; and he looks 
at life with the same piercing intellectual vision, 
with the same awe, and with a like depth of heart- 
experience. 

Five added centuries of time make it impossible 
for Browning to present the Gothic spirit with 
the same limits it had in Dante's genius. The 
later poet has transferred the stage of the Divine 
Comedy from the other world to this, and its 
actors are now living men and women, not the 
shades who walk the infernal or the celestial 
shores. He rejects all mythic appurtenances, 
sweeps out of sight every artificial contrivance 
of his predecessor, and takes life as it is into 
his poetry. 



BROWNING. 325 

It is man of whom Browning sings, as Words- 
worth sang of nature ; man as a soul seeking 
unity with God, but in the process of creation. 
He gives clear-cut and charming descriptions of 
what he has seen in nature, brief, incisive, magical 
with flashing penetration of thought; but man he 
ever delights in. Nature is to him only the en- 
vironment of the living and struggling human 
being. IVfan under all circumstances and con- 
ditions interests him, low as well as high, noble 
and vile alike. It is the soul in its struggles, 
toils, sins, achievements, defilements, hopes, and 
loves, that attracts his eye, that commands his 
sympathy. He loves the pure, hates the vile ; but 
all fascinate him, and all are to be faithfully 
interpreted. 

His theory of art would seem likely to make 
him a romanticist, leading to subjective visions 
and wild excesses of spiritual aspiration. This 
tendency is balanced by his profound interest in 
man, and by the sound sense and stability of his 
thought. His is a Gothic mind developed in an 
age of science. He is a romanticist working in 
contact with a generation given to machinery and 
industrial invention. Instead, therefore, of fol- 
lowing Richter and Novalis in the creation of 



326 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

characters that are more spiritual than manly, his 
Gothic temper works itself out in the sympa- 
thetic appreciation of humanity in all its many 
types and personalities. Man seeking his destiny 
through countless conditions of growth presents 
himself to the poet as an object of the highest 
imaginative stimulus, arousing in him a poetic 
fervor akin to that created in other poets by a 
direct contact with beauty. It is not grand per- 
sonalities or noble actions alone which appeal to 
him as a poet, but the whole process through 
which man works out his destiny as a spiritual 
being. It is this process of development, as it 
affects individuals, which arouses his imagination 
and his reason to their highest activity ; for, even 
with the most ordinary men, the inner experience 
of life is one of struggle and loss or struggle and 
attainment, and under conditions of higher mo- 
ment than the siege of Troy or the taking of 
Jerusalem. 

Browning is an artist whose materials are indi- 
vidual men in all the complex relations of life, 
rather than a civilization or a mighty formative 
idea. Dante took up the whole problem of man's 
spiritual destiny as it belongs to the race, but 
Browning deals with it as it belongs to the indi- 



BEOWNING. 327 

vidual soul ; and yet Browinng is like Dante in 
liis portrayal of struggle and tragedy on a grand 
scale. He lays liold of the problem of human 
destiny in the same serious and anxious manner, 
as the one thought large enough to arouse all his 
powers. 

Browning has a wonderful gift of soul-penetra- 
tion, of looking into and through other persons. 
He divines what they are, how they think, and 
what they are worth, with the swift, sure eye of 
keenest inspiration. He thus reads the open 
secret of all kinds of characters, with the same 
inmost sympathy and loyalty. His imagination 
takes this direction, when most active, of seeing 
into other natures and realizing them as if they 
were his own. 

He has an extensive and varied learning, w^hich 
he employs with great skill, as it is always suf- 
fused and glowing with imagination and feeling. 
His vivid imagination, quick and penetrative in 
power, discerns beauty with keenest eye ; and 
truth opens to his magic touch. He brings to 
the treatment of his wide-ranging subjects a 
knowledge minute and profound, in art and lite- 
rature, history and science, romance and music. 
He has a remarkable acquaintance with and 



328 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

insight into life and character in all countries and 
periods. In many directions he has an eager and 
never satisfied acquisitiveness ; not for mere facts, 
but for knowledge that interprets the largest 
issues of life. 

He does not care for science or philosophy in 
themselves, or for any other knowledge save in 
so far as it illustrates human nature, and gives him 
a clearer insight into its meaning and purpose. To 
know man is the one passion and the one delight 
of his life ; and he thinks no search wasted which 
brings him closer comprehension of an individual 
soul, and of its own special experiences. His 
knowledge of man, and of what enters into his 
success and failure, is of the widest and truest 
kind. 



y. 

In one of his poems Browning has described 
himself as " a writer of plays " ; and in one of his 
prefaces he says: "Such poems as the following 
come properly enough, I suppose, under the head 
of ' Dramatic Pieces ' ; being, though for the most 
part lyric in expression, always dramatic in prin- 
ciple, and so many utterances of so many imagi- 
nary persons, not mine." He may be rightly 
called a dramatic poet, though only a small pro- 
portion of his poems have taken the form of 
plays. In even his shorter poems it is some char- 
acter with a distinct and unique personality who 
speaks, whose thoughts are uttered, and whose 
situation and circumstances must be understood 
in order to reach its meaning. His poetry is 
dramatic in principle, because it presents the liv- 
ing person speaking his. own thoughts, sentiments, 
and feelings, and in a manner the most real and 
natural. His characters are thoroughly individ- 

329 



ooO POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

ual ; and tliey impress themselves on the reader 
with the force of the keenest and most vital 
personality. 

His seven pla3^s are poems written in dramatic 
form; but they are better adapted to the 
closet than the stage. They are too thoughtful, 
and too much given to the subtle analysis of char- 
acter, to succeed with the great majority of play- 
goers. In the preface to " Paracelsus," Browning 
forewarned his readers against regarding it as a 
dramatic work ; and yet it is nearly as dramatic in 
method as any of his other poems. His account 
of the purpose had in view in its writing would 
apply as well to his dramas. " It is an attempt," 
was his characteristic account of it, "probably 
more novel than happy, to reverse the method 
usually adopted by writers whose aim it is to set 
forth any phenomenon of the mind or the passions 
by the operation of persons and events ; and that, 
instead of having recourse to an external machin- 
ery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis I 
desire to produce, I have ventured to display 
somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and 
progress, and have suffered the agency by Avhich 
it is influenced and determined to be generally 
discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate 



BEOWNING. 331 

throughout, if not altogether excluded : and this 
for a reason. I have endeavored to write a poem, 
not a drama ; the canons of the drama are well 
known, and I cannot think but that, inasmuch as 
they have immediate regard to stage representa- 
tion, the peculiar advantages they hold out are 
really such only so long as the purpose for which 
they are at first instituted is kept in view. I 
do not very well understand what is called a 
dramatic poem, wherein all those restrictions only 
submitted to on account of compensating good in 
the original scheme are scrupulously retained, as 
though for some special fitness in themselves, — 
and all new facilities placed at an author's dis- 
posal by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously 
rejected. It is certain, however, that a work like 
mine depends more immediately on the intelli- 
gence and sympathy of the reader for its suc- 
cess." 

It is not stage effect which Browning has in 
view in his dramas, but the unfoldment of 
character. In the creation of such individuali- 
ties as will best unfold and interpret character in 
all its manifold forms, he does not work by 
external machinery of incident, action, and con- 
flict, but by causing a particular person to utter 



332 POETS AND PHOBLEMS. 

aloud the thoughts which express a peculiar senti- 
ment or mood of his mind. This he accomplishes 
not so much by the action displayed as by the 
sentiments uttered and the feelings expressed. 
The action of the play is inadequate to secure 
the desired effect on the stage ; the motive is too 
subtle and the development too thoughtful. Only 
when carefully read do the real purpose and spirit 
of the play present themselves, and even then 
only to those who can appreciate the finest analy- 
sis of character and the subtlest shades of per- 
sonal motive. 

In much the larger number of Browning's 
poems there is but one speaker, so that his 
method may be properly called the monodramatic.-^ 
The time, the country, the social and the moral 
environment, the situation and character of the 
speaker, are all developed through his words, no 
clew to them being given in any other manner, ex- 
cept in the title of the poem. His chief object is 
not to tell a story, even in those poems where 
there is most of movement and incident, but tliat 
of unfolding character and that of analyzing the 
hidden being of personality. He creates personal- 
ities of a unique character, not necessarily typical, 
but intensely and thoroughly original. Given 



BROWNING. 333 

such a person, in some mood which betrays his 
whole nature in its every hidden crevice and lurk- 
ing place of motive and feeling, and Browning 
makes him stand out before us revealed through 
and through by a blaze of light that leaves no 
place undiscovered. He minutely displays the 
mood in its rise and progress, and shows how it 
grows out of the personality of the character 
who is being analyzed. In pursuing this method 
Browning's object is the interpretation of a soul 
or a distinct personality; and he would prove 
that personality cannot be accounted for by its 
relations to humanity. In the dedication to the 
revised form of " Sordello " he clearly defined the 
purpose and method pursued in his monodramas. 
"The historical decoration," he wrote, "was 
purposely of no more importance than a back- 
ground requires, and my stress lay on the inci- 
dents in the development of a soul ; little else is 
worth study. I, at least, always thought so." 
His one sole aim in all his poetry is to show that 
the development of a soul is the object of life. 
Whatever there is in his poetry which is dramatic 
grows out of his attempt to show how individuals, 
placed under circumstances peculiar to them- 
selves, are exalted or debased according to the 



334 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

way in which they use the instruments given 
them for their development. 

The dramatic motive of Shakspere grows out of 
the relations of men to each other as social beings 
or as units in the life of humanity. They help or 
hinder each other because mutually dependent; 
they are influenced by each other's thoughts and 
actions, and they are constantly affected through 
the solidarity of the race. The motives, the con- 
flicts, and the tragic situations wrought out in 
his dramas are the results of these relations of 
men to each other. Browning does not think of 
man in this way, as a member of humanity, as 
dependent on it and the environment of feeling, 
tradition, and thought it provides for him. He 
thinks of man always as a distinct personality, 
whose nearest and most intimate relationship is 
with the Infinite Person; and as preparing him- 
self for an eternal spiritual destiny. It is the 
individual man he inter^Drets, whose sources of 
strength are not in humanity, but in his relations 
to God and a world of supernatural realities. 

The tragedy in Shakspere's plays is the result 
of the loves, jealousies, and hates of men as social 
beings. The tragedy in Browning's poems is the 
result of an individual's acceptance or rejection of 



BROWNING. 335 

the conditions which advance his spiritual destiny. 
Shakspere is interested in the individual only as 
related to humanity; Browning is interested in 
humanity only as composed of many distinct indi- 
viduals, each pursuing his own personal career. 
The result of this difference in their conception 
of the individual is that Shakspere writes a true 
drama, in which a number of persons affect and 
change each other's present welfare, and that 
Browning writes a monodrama, in which an indi- 
vidual uses his environment, whether of nature or 
humanity, for his development as a soul working 
out a spiritual destiny, which can only be realized 
in the future. Browning's individual may accept 
the spiritual development as the true aim and 
motive of his life, or he may reject it. He may 
realize that earth is imperfect, and that he can 
gain the true end of his development only in the 
future world; or he may accept the present as 
enough in itself. If he accepts the true aim of 
life, it can be realized only by what is, in an 
earthly sense, defeat. If he rejects the true aim 
of life, and prefers earthly success, it is at the 
loss of what is most worthy of attainment. Al- 
most w^ithout exception these two forms of con- 
flict give to Browning's poems their dramatic 



336 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

situations, such as they are. His conception of 
the individual man determines the whole attitude 
of his work and his method of interpreting life. 
It even determines the particular form in which 
he has expressed his poetical genius. 

The incidents in the development of a soul 
assume an importance to Browning which they 
do not have in the work of any other dramatist 
or poet of the present time. His conception of 
their importance gives a didactic aim to his work, 
vand makes him a teacher or a preacher as well as 
a poet. He is not, however, a didactic poet in 
the usual sense of that word ; for his teaching 
is so inwoven with his artistic purpose, so subtly 
plays about it and guides it, that it is never intru- 
sive or prominent. Indeed, it could be justly 
denied that Browning has a didactic aim, so in- 
timately does he connect his teachings with the 
individuality and the activity of his characters. 
A comparison of a number of his poems with each 
other, as to their underlying purpose and motive, 
however, will reveal a distinct philosophic and 
moral aim in all his work. His purpose is not 
mainly artistic; for he recognizes the need of 
bringing all human aims into one harmonious 
expression and giving them a true proportion. 



BROWKING. 337 

Browning has been called the poet of pyschol- 
ogy ; and it is the tendency of his mind towards 
the analysis of character which gives to his poetry 
its peculiar dramatic form. With the growth of 
scientific studies the word psychology has come 
into great prominence ; but it has obtained its 
recognition mainly in connection with positive 
and evolutionary theories. George Eliot and 
Henry James are described as psychologic novel- 
ists, because their main purpose is the analysis 
and portrayal of character, and not the telling of 
stories. Scott portrays his characters through 
his epic narrative, full of life and incident, mak- 
ing the reader know them through what they are 
and what they do. George Eliot makes the 
narrative subordinate, and she gives her whole 
strength, in description and conversation, to the 
development and interpretation of character. 
Scott puts his characters on the stage, and 
then permits them to act out the drama of life 
without interruption. George Eliot continually 
appears before the scenes to interpret her char- 
acters and their deeds, and their relations to each 
other. She regards man as the result of heredity, 
as guided by the past of the race, and as pro- 
foundly affected by his social surroundings. 



338 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Because Browning also devotes himself to the 
analysis of character, he belongs to the psycho- 
logic school with George Eliot; but in this one 
direction only does he touch a point of sympathy 
with her. He is an idealist; she was a positivist. 
He sees in man's spiritual origin that which 
makes each individual distinct from all others; 
she regarded man as the product of heredity and 
altruistic influences. He believes in God and 
a future world as the surest of realities ; she 
believed in humanity and the survival of the in- 
dividual in the race. This complete and pro- 
foundly important contrast in their conceptions 
of character has not been sufficiently taken into 
account in applying the word " psychologic " to 
them both. If it belongs to the one, it does not 
to the other, unless it is strictly limited, 'in its 
application, to the method and form of their 
work. They both follow a method strictly the 
opposite to that of Shakspere and Scott, but for 
reasons which have little in common. 

Browning follows the psychologic method be- 
cause, to him, each person is unique and individ- 
ual, unlike every other, and to be classed only in 
an order by himself. George Eliot uses the 
psychologic method because the character of 



BROWNING. 339 

each person is determined by hereditary and 
evolutionary forces which it is most interesting 
and profitable to trace out in the spirit of scien- 
tific research. The word "psychologic," when 
used in this latter sense, has a very indefinite 
meaning, and one that is as misleading as it is 
indefinite. Those authors who make it their 
chief purpose to portray character, in contrast 
with those who aim at the creation of an elaborate 
plot and a fascinating narrative, may be said to 
be psychologic in method. Rigidly confined to this 
meaning, and without reference to psychologic 
and scientific theories, the phrase "psychologic 
method " has a definite and desirable place as a 
descriptive term in literary criticism. If it is also 
made to mean, as it sometimes has been, a recog- 
nition of the positive and evolutionary theories of 
man's origin and destiny, then it does in no 
degree whatever apply to Browning, for he has 
no sympathy with those theories or any of the 
conclusions drawn from them. 

Browning has little capacity for the develop- 
ment of dramatic action. His plays lag in 
movement, they have no proper development and 
culmination, and their interest is either in the 
novel characters they present or in the thoughtful 



340 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

teaching they contain. What dramatic movement 
there is is in the changes of mood which come to 
the characters, and not in the advancement of 
the action itself. To investigate personalities, 
to discover what they are and how they act, 
forms the leading purpose in all his work. This 
purpose he has well defined in the person of one 
of his characters : — 

Take the least man of all mankind, as I ; 
Look at his head and heart, find how and why 
He differs from his fellows utterly. 

This is a purpose which profoundly and deeply 
interests Browning, for it is personality in man, 
whatever the form it takes, which most of all 
things attracts and fascinates him. 

Personality of many kinds Browning has 
sketched in his poems and plays, with skill 
of the largest fashioning power and insight of 
the keenest. He identifies himself with his char- 
acters, takes their point of view, and yet gives 
them a personality of a unique kind.^ He loves 
most of all those characters who are peculiar, who 
have no imitators, who do not belong to a class, 
who represent themselves only. (He has seen 
human nature through and through, in a wide 
variety of its manifestations ; and he is ever alive 



VI. 

There can be no doubt that Browning is a 
great poet, and one who will compel the future to 
give its admiration freely to his best work. He 
is not a mere writer of verses or even a great 
23oet in the purely artistic sense ; and he is not 
merely a thinker or an essayist who has adopted 
a poetical form of expression. He has all the 
qualities of a poet ; imagination soaring and 
clear-visioned, a strong and rugged power of giv- 
ing form to his feeling and thought, a subtle and 
penetrating insight into the meanings of life 
and nature, and a richly tempered and joyous 
sympathy with man and the world. He is led 
through his emotions and sympathies to appre- 
ciate all that is beautiful and good ; and he is 
impressed through his feelings and aspirations 
with the grandeur and the marvel of what life 
reveals. 

845 



346 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Not forgetting that Browning is a poet of lofty- 
wing and far-sweeping sight, he may be more 
specially characterized as an intellectual poet, as a 
poet who thinks and philosophizes. He delights in 
taking up the great problems of life, in suffusing 
them with the light of his own thought and feel- 
ing, and then in giving them an interpretation 
clear, inspiring, and sublime. He has thought 
very deeply on all the great problems man has 
debated through the ages, and he has many fresh 
suggestions to make in regard to them. The con- 
ventional answers to the questions man is ever 
asking do not suffice with him ; he wishes to con- 
sult the oracles for himself. 

He loves the problems suggested by man and 
his life here, and he delights to cope with them. 
The enigma of man's nature and destiny attracts 
him ; he seems to be drawn to it as the moth to 
the flame. It fascinates him, and yet he looks at 
it coolly, deals with it in a lofty spirit, probes into 
it as far as it can be done, and flashes out his 
wonderful interpretations with the instinctive 
sureness of genius. He comes to these problems 
seriously, as one who feels the weight and burden 
of them, who believes them the most worthy sub- 
jects with which a man or a poet can deal. 



BROWNING. 347 

He looks at these problems with hope; and he 
is never cast down by them. He has a steady 
conviction that their meaning is open to man, and 
that it is worthy— and it alone — of his thought 
and search. If Carlyle, Heine, and Byron de- 
spaired of a solution, were overmastered by the 
problem of man's being, or gave way to despair 
and gloom, not so Browning. His hope burns 
calml}^ on, no despair touches his heart ; his faith 
is ever ilame-like and bright, as if it came out of 
unquenchable fires of knowledge. 

No English poet, unless it is Shakspere, will 
■yield so much of thought, for the attentive 
reader, as Browning. He is full of wisdom, rich 
with revelations to the moral nature, and a needed 
spiritual teacher for the latter half of the nine- 
teenth century. Poetry has its word to speak as 
well as science ; and Browning speaks the word 
of poetry for a scientific age. He has the analytic 
spirit, he can probe into the facts of life and 
nature as well as any other, and as deeply ; but 
he reads life without destroying it, and his su- 
preme purpose is constructive and synthetic. He 
sees tlirough and through the world with the eyes 
of the poet, and he does not need to dissect it 
to know it. He is an absolutely independent 



348 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

thinker, brave, clear-seeing, tolerant, and wide- 
souled. He unites in one nature some of the 
highest capacities of both the reasoner and the 
creator ; with an eye keen for facts, like Darwin's, 
he unites a subtle instinct for truth, like Kant's, 
and Dante's high-soaring imagination. Browning 
sweeps the horizon with his vision, and he does 
not forget the sun which shines over his head. 
He is a daring thinker, robust in thought, and 
with an instinctive regard for what is real and 
fact-like. His is one of the most balanced and 
rounded minds to be found in the history of 
English literature. He views life on many 
sides, with faculties healthy and well proportioned 
one to another. He has a strong imagination, 
but it is not in excess of his other faculties, and it 
does not cause him to see the world in the form 
of any mirage which it creates. He has an ana- 
lytic faculty, but it is balanced by vigorous spirit- 
ual perceptions and an active imagination. He is 
too speculative and too metaphysical for a poet, 
and yet how impassioned are his emotions, how 
radiant his sympathies ! 

Browning is both a subjective and an objective 
poet. His literary method is objective; but his 
philosophy of life, and his interpretation of the 



BROWNING. 349 

individual man, are subjective. By able critics 
he has been called a realist ; and by others, quite 
as able, a transcendentalist. His merit is that he 
rises to a point of view higher than that of either 
the purely subjective or the purely objective poet, 
and unites the two methods, with results in some 
respects higher than either has attained. He has 
not Shakspere's gift of objective creation, but he 
has a firmer grasp of the subjective forces of life. 
He has not Spenser's winged idealism, but he 
has a much truer appreciation of the objective 
realities of existence. He uses nature and intui- 
tion, objectivities and emotions, with an equal 
appreciation of their worth, joining them in a 
true synthesis. 

Browning has been described as representing 
"militant transcendentalism, the transcendental 
movement at odds with the scientific " ; but the 
description is not specially felicitous or accurate. 
He does not violently oppose himself to the scien- 
tific movement, though he is not in sympathy 
with its conclusions that are materialistic and 
agnostic. He is an idealist by conviction, with 
many affinities for the teachings of Hegel ; but he 
has given idealism the shape of his own original 
and independent mind. He is not a disciple of 



350 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

any of the great masters of idealistic philosophy, 
he has thought out the problems of the universe 
for himself, and he gives them a poetic rather 
than a philosophic interpretation. Those who 
are specially interested in philosophy will be 
likely to find in Browning conclusions similar to 
their own, and they will set forth the closeness 
of his relations to Hegel or some other ; but such 
a label does not fit the man, and it seems quite 
out of place when fastened on Browning. He 
has been much influenced by the philosophy 
of Hegel, without doubt; but that philosophy 
has been to him simply a thing to wrestle with, 
in order to the trying of his own strength ; and 
he has gained by the encounter. It is not Hegel 
who speaks in his poetry, though his interpreta- 
tions of life have been informed and enlarged by 
some of the theories of the great idealist. He 
identifies love and knowledge in the same manner 
as Hegel identifies being and thought; but Brown- 
, ing gives to the individual a place in his way of 
thinking that is not at all in accordance with the 
theories of Hegel. 

Browning is too triumphantly confident of the 
truth of idealism to become its militant defender. 
His profound interest in the individual and his 



BROWNING. 351 

relations to the Infinite grows out of that philoso- 
phy. His whole aim has been to show that it is 
possible 

— to joint 
This flexile, finite life once tight 
Into the fixed and infinite, 

and to make man's relations to God the one con- 
trolling thought and purpose of life. He does 
not believe that the truth which is of supreme 
worth comes to us from without, from the study 
of nature or the history of man : — 

Truth is within ourselves ; 
There is an inmost centre in us all 
Where truth abides in fulness. 

Each individual has access to God through his 
own nature, and Browning judges men by their 
faithfulness to this inner light of reason and 
intuition. He deals with the individual as 
related to God, not as related to nature. He 
does not start with the objective world or with 
a study of nature ; but with the Transcendent 
God, from whom come all life and light. He 
assumes that God exists, and that he is a 
supremely transcendent Personality. From that 
centre he judges all things, and ranges them in 
order according to their relations to that fact : — 



/ 



352 POETS AND PBOBLEMS. 

He dwells in all, 
From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
To man — the consummation of this scheme 
Of being, the completion of this sphere 
Of life. 

He does not identify God with law, but raises 
him infinitely above it, and makes him in the 
most actual sense a personal being. His faith in 
A God is earnest, strong, and deep; and yet it is 
not formal and conventional. The ordinary 
thoughts about God do not in the least satisfy 
him, and no statement of creed or theology is 
enough to gain the assent of his mind. These 
words are spoken by one of his characters : — 

He glows above 
"With scarce an intervention, presses close 
And palpitatingly, his soul o'er ours. 

It is not to be supposed that these words are 
precisely those with which Browning would make 
statement of his own faith in God; but they 
indicate his attitude of mind. To him God is a 
personal guide and savior of men, who yearns 
after their redemption from sin and evil, and 
who watches confidingly over all their deeds. 
Browning describes the faith of one of the great 
masters of literature, and the description applies 
to himself; — 



BBOWXIXG. 353 

Crowned by prose and verse; and, wielding with wit's bauble, 

learning's rod. . . . 
Well ? Why, he at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God ! 

Starting with God as the centre and life of all 
things, Browning next gives emphasis to the 
Ego, or the personality of man. In his conception 
of man he has also taken direction of Hegel, and 
he regards him as the one being in whom growth 
is the chief characteristic : — 

Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, 

Not God's and not the beast's; God is, they are^ 

Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be. 

Man is a personality, capable of taking the past 
into himself, and of making all its results living 
realities in his own nature. He is in a state of 
becoming, still in the process of development. 
Man completes the material process of evolution, 
and, through his spiritual nature, reaches forward 
and begins another, of a higher and more perfect 
order. 

If Browning were a thinker only, his work 
should be pronounced a failure, for his philosophy 
could have been better presented in simple prose. 
Taking it as the skeleton of his poetic creations it 
has given a force and meaning, a breadth and 
beauty, to his work it could not have had other- 



354 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

wise. What is most characteristic and original, 
and most identified with his genius, could not 
have been given to us in the true Browning man- 
ner without the metaphysics. Their use has led 
him long journeys, carried him into subtle laby- 
rinths of inquiry, it is true ; and that is always to 
be regretted, for it makes the reading of his 
poems a process far too difficult. Yet, in the 
whole body of his work, taken as the product of 
one mind, there is an amount of poetic beauty and 
thought combined not to be found in the work of 
any other recent poet. After all is said by way 
of praise of the metaphysics on the part of a few, 
and by wa}^ of criticism on the part of those who 
do not like the philosophy. Browning is, in the 
habit and trend of his mind, a poet. It is through 
emotion and imagination he reads the world, not 
through logic and the understanding. Balanced 
as his mind is, the direction of it is poetward, and 
towards an artistic apprehension of the world. 



VII. 

Browning has been described as a poet of 
doubt. Like all other half-statements, this one 
is based on a misconception of his true attitude 
towards religion. He doubts in regard to certain 
traditional and historic phases of Christianity, 
because he believes in regard to what is of funda- 
mental importance in the religion of the soul. 
Browning is familiar with modern doubts and 
skepticism, knows their arguments and their 
force, and he has wrestled with them himself; 
but he is not overcome by them. 

In some of his poems Browniug would seem to 
be without reverence, to be a bold and daring 
speculator, as well as wanting in trust and faith. 
He asks the most perplexing questions ; he scorns 
all conventional answers; he dea-ls with the most 
solemn problems of life as if they were every-day 
matters of little moment, and even in what seems 
to be a mocking vein ; and he has little respect 
for many of the externals of religion, which are 
of so much moment to many. In regard, how- 

355 



356 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

ever, to tliat which he conceives to be essential, 
his position is not one of doubt, but of the in- 
tensest and most confident faith. His faith is so 
deep and assured that he does not fear to face, 
and to deal j)lainly with, what other persons 
shrink from, and to demand other answers of his 
faith than those which are conventional. 

Browning doubts concerning the externals of 
religion only, and in the name of that inward evi- 
dence which alone brings assured conviction. 
His faith rests on God's revelation of himself to 
the world ; his doubts grow out of his disinclina- 
tion to accept a traditional report of man's com- 
munion with God. He has put into the mouth of 
the Pope in the " Ring and the Book" an explicit 
statement of his own conce2)tion of the nature and 
value of true faith, of that faith which grows out 
of a direct intuition of God : — 

As we broke that old faith of the world 
Have we, next age, to break up this new — 
Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report — 
Whence need to bravely disbelieve report 
Through increased faith in thing reports belie ? 
Must we deny. . . . 

Recognized truths, obedient to some truth 
Unrecognized yet but perceptible ? — 
Correct the portrait by the living face, 
Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man ? 



BROWNING. 357 

No more definite description of Browning's atti- 
tude towards the religion of his time could be 
given than is contained in these words. They 
indicate that he is a transcendentalist, and that he 
finds the authenticity and proof of religious truth 
in the soul's intuitions. He would have faith in 
the thing ; that is, faith that God speaks directly 
to the soul of whatever man will listen to that 
still, small voice of the Infinite Truth within; 
and not faith in the mere report that men once 
had such a revelation. We must needs disbelieve 
the report for the sake of that truth which is 
about to break forth from the word of God. We 
may even reject the historic evidences of Chris- 
tianity, because of that higher evidence which 
comes of a living contact with God through the 
intuitions of the soul. 

Like all other idealists, Browning ignores the 
external and historic, and lays all stress on the 
inward and intuitive. He doubts at those points 
where science and history touch the problems of 
religion ; he believes where faith is made stronger 
through intuition and philosophy. In ''Paracel- 
sus" he speaks of "just so much doubt" as would 
enable him to " plant a surer foot upon the sun- 
road." In "Easter-Day" he declares that 



358 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

You must mix some imcertainty 
With faith, if you would have faith be. 

Not by any demoDstration, that puts doubt en- 
tirely away, is true faith to be gained, but by the 
glow of nature without inviting man on, and by 
the aspiration within that gives him sight of an 
infinitely wider and more beautiful world. Intu- 
ition does not give absolute proof, so that cer- 
tainty is made sure ; but it attracts by glimpses 
and foregleamings, and by the vision of a world 
transcendently above and beyond the present. 
The only proof of that higher world is to be 
found in the soul's craving for it, and in its corre- 
spondence with that which intuition demands. 
This is the position of Browning, as it is the posi- 
tion of all men who have touched the deepest and 
most sacred things of the soul with the fresh in- 
sight of genius. It is not in the nature of those 
things which are most loftily spiritual to be 
"demonstrated" by the methods of history or of 
science. The}^ offer their own methods and their 
own evidences. Their demonstration is that of 
life and that of the soul's experiences. We must 
climb these mountains for ourselves, with the 
help of a guide, to be sure, but not by the aid of 
railway or telegraph. / 



BuowxiXG. 359 

It may be said of Browning that he is essen- 
tially a Christian poet. To some this may seem 
a condemnation; but why should it be so? He 
is not a theologian or a versifier of theology. 
He is not a dogmatist or a sectarian. The grand 
conception of the Avorld which Christianity pre- 
sents, its lofty hopes and its pure ideals, have 
become inwoven with the texture of his mind. 
Its spirit has permeated his soul. Its history and 
its traditions, its life and mission of the Christ, its 
profound conception of humanity as related to the 
unseen world, its struggle of man for spiritual 
attainment, have seemed to him worthy of the 
sincerest and the noblest poetic treatment. They 
are to him neither myth nor dogma, but poetic 
interpretations of spiritual facts. 

Browning has the deep inner spirit of Chris- 
tianity. To him it is a life and a growth, and an 
outreaching of the finite after the Infinite. It is 
not a creed, or a fixed form of thought, or a goal 
to seek for selfish ends ; but it is all that uplifts 
to make attainment sure, under the spiritual 
leadership of Christ. The Christ is not a mere 
captain of salvation ; but a realized explanation 
of all that God is to men in his infinite love and 
tenderness. What is hard, formal, and extrinsic in 



360 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

Christianity comes not to Browning, for he has no 
affinity with it in mind or heart. What is large, 
suggestive, spiritual, and interior in it he embraces 
with eager conviction. To him it is not some- 
thing written in a book, but the law of that ever- 
living process of incarnation by which God re- 
veals himself in the life of humanity. It is the 
calm, sweet voice of the Eternal One speaking to 
men of life and of life's worth. 

His acceptance of the interior and spiritual sig- 
nificance of Christianity is seen in all those poems 
wherein he has dealt with the Christian legends. 
He is concerned for them only as they are the 
means of unfolding spiritual truths. In " Saul" 
he has finely interpreted his conception of Christ 
as an expression of the human love and sympathy 
of God. God feels for man with a man's tender- 
ness and yearning. It is this human-heartedness 
of God which aj)pears in the Christ. This it 
is which gives to the Christ-conception its pro- 
found value and its shaping power to guide the 
world's aspirations. David sings of the beauty of 
nature, the joy of human existence, and the glory 
of a life now lived for the coming ages of man- 
kind ; but none of these hopes satisfy Saul. Only 
when he sings of the redeeming love of God, and 



BEOWNING. 361 

of that infinite blessedness which Christ reveals, 
is the king made to have faith. The whole 
passage in which David sets forth the Christly 
nature of God's relations to man is one of great 
beauty, and it may well be quoted entire : — 

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — no song more I 
out broke — 

*' I have gone the whole round of Creation: I saw and I spoke! 
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain 
And pronoimced on the rest of his handwork — returned him 

again 
His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw. 
I report, as a man may of God's work — all's love, yet all's law! 
Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked 
To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dew-drop was 

asked. 
Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at wisdom laid bare. 
Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite 

care! 
Do I task any faculty highest, to image success? 
I but open my eyes, and perfection, no more and no less, 
In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. 
And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew 
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) 
The submission of Man's nothing-perfect to God's All-Complete, 
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet ! 
Yet with all this abounding experience, this Deity known, 
I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own. 
There's one faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hood-wink, 
I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think) 



862 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Lest, insisting to claim and parade it, wot ye, I worst 
E'en the Giver in one gift — Behold! I could love if I durst! 
But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake 
God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain, for love's 

sake ! 
— What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors 

great and small, 
Mne-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the himdredth 

appall? 
In the least things, have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all? 
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift. 
That I doubt his own love can compete with it? here, the parts 

shift? 
Here, the creature surpass the Creator, the end, what Began? — 
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, 
And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet alone can? 
Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less 

power. 
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower 
Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul, 
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole? 
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest) 
These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, 

the best? 
Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height 
This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, death's minute 

of night? 
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake, 
Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid him awake 
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set 
Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new harmony yet 
To be run, and continued, and ended — who knows — or endure! 
The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure. 
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, 
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggle in this. 



BROWNING. 363 

"I believe it! 'tis Thou, Grod, that givest, 'tis I who receive: 

In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. 

All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my 

prayer 
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. 
From thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread 

Sabaoth : 
/will? — the mere atoms despise me! and why am I loth 
To look that, even that in the face too? why is it I dare 
Think but lightly of such impuissance? what stops my despair ? 
This; — 'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what 

man Would do ! 
See the king — I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall 

through. 
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, 
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — knowing which, 
I know that my service is perfect. — Oh, speak through me now ! 
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wilt Thou — so wilt 

Thou! 
So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost Crown — 
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down 
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath. 
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that Salvation joins issue with 

death! 
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of Being beloved! 
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the 

most weak. 
^Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I 

seek 
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee : a Man like to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever! a Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new hf e to thee ! See the Christ 

stand!'' 



864 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

The breadth of Browning's thought, and the 
sincerity of his spiritual convictions, are also to 
be seen in " Christmas-Eve," in which he speaks 
more fully in his own person than in any other 
of his longer poems. There he passes all the 
ways of interpreting Christ before him, to con- 
demn and yet to approve them all. What he 
condemns and what he approves help us to see 
his own searching thought seeking after what is 
essential, and ready to reject all else. He clings 
not to the form ; it is the inner and heaven-born 
truth he desires to attain unto. That found, and 
seen clearly with the eyes of the soul, and he is 
ready to let all forms and names and party cries 
slip away into the nothingness whence they came. 
Browning's religion is of the heart rather than of 
the intellect. This fact it is which interprets his 
conception of the Christ, who reveals in the 
loftiest human form the heart of God to the 
world. There is in Christ a process of growth, 
and not an aim that has been reached. He is an 
ideal, and not a dogma; he is a motive to life 
rather than an object of faith. His spirit may be 
found under all forms of faith ; but it is Christ as 
a grand personal interpreter of the true spiritual 
life we are to follow, and not his teachings in the 



BEOWNING. 365 

abstract. The truths he proclaimed find their 
force and beauty in the fact that he uttered them. 
It is the life which is worth more than the teach- 
ing ; for it was the life which was the true light 
of men. There is more in a great personality 
than in any truth the world has ever known. 

Browning is a believer in revelation through 
the endowed personality of man. There is no 
evidence in his poetry that he believes in any 
other revelation or in any other avenue for the 
reception of moral and spiritual truth. The man 
of intuition, insight, and genius is the medium of 
God's communication of himself to the world. 
All knowledge is consummated in the being of 
God, and communicated in the outgoing of his 
personality. It is. never absolute for man ; it 
flashes on him with its transcendent glory; it 
attracts him, allures him, draws him on ; but it is 
never reached in its fulness. Yet the truth is 
given to man in such measure that it guides and 
comforts him. Browning rightly denies to it the 
character of absoluteness, for the medium of its 
reception is always of a kind to blur it and mar 
its beauty. The true revelation is to the heart 
rather than to the head, to the emotions rather 
than to the intellect, and it takes the form not 



866 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

of dogma but of life. It is " an exalted magnetic 
personality " through which God makes all his 
revelations of whatever kind to men, in the be- 
lief of Browning. Such persons are magnetic 
to God, the thrill of his life infuses their being, 
and he opens to them new avenues of spiritual 
aspiration and attainment. Such men constitute 
the highest force in the world ; they are the true 
leaders of men, the God-given helpers of mankind. 
Of all these men of intuition the poet is the most 
exalted, the most essential to the higher life of 
humanity, for he is the one who insx3ires the race 
and gives it God's law of life. 

A poet must be earth's essential king, 

is the declaration of Sordello. Through the poet, 
or the man of intuition, for these are one and the 
same, the life of man is constantly renewed by 
fresh access to God. Revelation is progressive, 
a vision that gives new capacity, an instinct that 
brings new access of power. Nothing short of 
the Infinite is to give man final rest ; all is move- 
ment, a tabernacle-life. The Infinite opens ujDon 
him with its assurance, forces itself upon his 
attention; but he can grasp its meaning and 
its reality only by the slow process of compliance 



BROWNING. 367 

with its law and its spirit. When one step has 
been taken, another follows; one height scaled, 
another presents itself. Advance widens the 
vision, enlarges the ideal, and increases the 
capacity for loftier intuitions. 

Perhaps Browning's attitude towards the prob- 
lems of religion is best seen in his ideas on the 
subject of human nature and conversion. He 
does not believe in anything like absolute deprav- 
ity ; but he does believe that the normal or 
intuitive use of the human faculties is the true 
means of growth. In many of his minor poems, 
especially those having love for their subject, 
he teaches that man attains genuine happiness and 
his true destiny by obedience to the emotions and 
instincts that come to him spontaneously. The 
great sin of life is that of calculation and prudence. 
We are to obey the deeper impulses of the heart 
and the soul's intuitions, if we w^ould live the true 
moral life. In "Christina" he has presented this 
idea in a most expressive manner, as the one 
grand thought which should guide us all. 

Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! 

But not quite so sunk that moments, 
Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, 

When the spirit's true endoTMnents 



368 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

Stand out plainly from its false ones, 

And apprise it if pursuing 
Or the right way or the wrong way, 

To its triumph or undoing. 

There are flashes struck from midnights, 

There are fire-flames noondays kindle. 
Whereby piled-up honors perish, 

Whereby swoln ambitions dwindle, 
While just this or that poor impulse, 

Which for once had play unstifled, 
Seems the sole work of a lifetime 

That away the rest have trifled. 

It is these inward revelations of the soul, these 
intuitions that come not by forethought or intel- 
lectual processes, which combine with life's expe- 
riences to convert us from the earthly life to a 
true apprehension of the spiritual realities which 
are above and beyond. God works through the 
normal capacities of human nature to teach us 
the higher way and law of life. If man is to 
attain the true purpose of his being it must be 
done, according to Browning, by 

— indulging every instinct of the soul. 

Every natural faculty is to be developed by a 
faithful acceptance of its commands. 

It is not to be supposed that Browning pur- 
poses to teach that mere impulse and passion are 
to be followed as the ruling forces in life. That 



BEOWNING. 369 

would be quite against all the tendencies of his 
thought, and opposed to the whole spirit of his 
poetry. Moral truth does not come to us through 
a selfish inquiry into what will be the result ; but 
by insight, acceptance, and obedience. There are 
moments which come to us all, when our minds 
attain a height above the mere cares and concerns 
of daily life, when thought dawns within in 
splendor, when the conscience is faithful as the 
magnetic needle, and when the will feels uncon- 
querable power of obedience to the ideal ; and it 
is these moments of highest inspiration by which 
we should guide our lives. When we order our 
lives by the spirit of these rare moments we are 
in the truest sense in the way of attainment. 
Love comes to us, also, to teach us renunciation, 
unselfishness, and fidelity. It takes us out of 
ourselves, inspires us with a nobler and a more 
sympathetic spirit, and exalts the Avhole nature 
by the purer impulse it creates. If love, however, 
descends to questions of prudence and worldly 
wisdom, it is debased and exiled from its own 
highest good. The impulse of love is generous, 
holy, and self -forgetting. It kindles new ardors 
of nobleness and sympathy; it makes duty a 
common privilege of daily exercise, and it opens 



370 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

the gates of the ideal to let the light flood 
through. The lover becomes the poet, and his 
thoughts are " of imagination all compact." The 
lover is therefore the truest of men, the most 
worthy in spirit ; and he it is who walks farthest 
out on the " sun-road " that leads to the land of 
spiritual accomplishment. 

It is these moments of pure insight through 
which man's conversion is accomplished. The 
Eternal Spirit flashes in upon his soul a vision 
of what his life ought to become, and for one 
moment gives to him a knowledge of moral truth. 
If he joyfully receives and obeys, he comes to 
know the way of true attainment. This vision 
is but a momentary glimpse, because man needs 
to be made aware of the spiritual realms within 
and above, and because the path of perfect 
attainment is to be found only through the hard 
experiences of life. Some light off shore may 
flash forth its momentary splendor for us from 
time to time, but we must find our way through 
the darkness and the weary waste of waters by 
our own effort. The true mariner sails God's 
seas of the spirit with courage and confidence, 
though the tempest mingles with the calm in his 
experience. The old Pope, in the "Ring and 



BEOWNING. 371 

Book," is made to utter Browning's convictions 
about the educative process of life : — 

Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
And so be pedestalled in triumph ? . . . 
Learning anew the use of soldiership, 
Self-abnegation, freedom from all fear. 
Loyalty to the life's end! . . . 
All till the very end is trial in life. 

Mind is not matter nor from matter, but 
Above, — leave matter then, proceed with mind: 

This life is training and a passage ; pass, — 

Still, we march over some flat obstacle 

We made give way before us ; solid truth 

In front of it, were motion for the world ? 

The moral sense gains but by exercise. 

'Tis even as man grew probatively 

Initiated in Godship, set to make 

A fairer moral world than this he finds, 

Guess now what shall be known hereafter. . . . 

Life is probation and this earth no goal 

But starting point of man. 

The object of this life of discipline, says St. 
John, in "A Death in a Desert," is to permit us 
to gain the attainment and satisfaction which 
come of love. 

For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear, 

Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. 



372 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

The need and the process of probation are more 
fully made real to us in the same poem. 

Man is not God but hatli God's end to serve, 

A master to obey, a course to take, 

Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become? 

Grant this, then man must pass from old to new. 

From vain to real, from mistake to fact. 

From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. 

How could man have progression otherwise? 

. . . He falls 
Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast, 
Made to know that he can know and not more : 
Lower than God who knows all and can all, 
Higher than beasts which know and can so far 
As each beast's limit, perfect to an end. 
Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more ; 
While man knows partly but conceives beside, 
Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, 
And in this striving, this converting air 
Into a solid he may grasp and use. 
Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, 
Not God's, and not the beast's: God is, they are, 
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. 
Such progress could no more attend his soul 
Were all its struggles after found at first 
And guesses changed to knowledge absolute. 
Than motion wait his body, were all else 
Than it the solid earth on every side, 
Where now through space he moves from rest to rest. 
Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect 
He could not, what he knows now, know at first ; 
When he considers that he knows to-day. 
Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown, 



BROWXING. 373 

Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns 
Because he lives, which is to be a man, 
Set to instruct himself by his past self: 
First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, 
Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind. 
Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law. 
God's gift was that man should conceive of truth 
And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake. 
As midway help till he reach fact indeed. 

Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship ? 
The pattern on the Mount subsists no more, 
Seemed awhile, then turned to nothingness; 
But copies, Moses strove to make thereby, 
Serve still and are replaced as time requires : 
By these, make newest vessels, reach the type ! 
If ye demur, this judgment on your head, 
Never to reach the ultimate, angel's law. 
Indulging every impulse of the soul 
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing. 

But why should man be given this process of 
probation? Why should he not have been made 
pure and perfect, instead of being wrought forth 
by so hard a process? In "Rabbi Ben Ezra," 
Browning has given his answer : — 

Poor vaunt of life indeed. 
Were man but formed to feed 
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast: 
Such feasting ended, then 
As sure an end to men ; 

Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw- 
crammed beast ? 



374 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Rejoice we are allied 

To that which doth provide 

And not partake, effect and not receive ! 

A spark disturbs our clod ; 

Nearer we hold of God 

Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. 

Then, welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! 
Be our joys three parts pain ! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the 
throe ! 

Then he compares man, as being developed by 
God's spiritual process, to a cup in the hands of a 
potter. It is enough that the potter and the 
clay endure, and that the latter is being shaped 
to serve the purpose of the former. 

Fool ! All that is, at all, 

Lasts ever, past recall ; 

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: 

What entered into thee. 

That was, is, and shall be : 

Time's wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay endure. 

He fixed thee mid this dance 

Of plastic circumstance, 

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest : 

Machinery just meant 

To give thy soul its bent, 

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 



BROWNING. 375 

What though the earlier grooves 

Which ran the laughing loves 

Around thy base, no longer pause and press ? 

What though, about thy rim, 

Scull-things in order grim 

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress ? 

Look not thou down, but up ! 
To uses of a cup, 

The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, 
The new wine's foaming flow, 
The Masters lips aglow! 

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with 
earth's wheel ? 

But I need, now as then, 

Thee, God, who mouldest men ; 

And since, not even while the world was worst, 

Did I, — to the wheel of life 

With shapes and colors rife, 

Bound dizzily, — mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst : 

So, take and use Thy w^ork ! 

Amend what flaws may lurk, 

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the 

aim! 
My times be in Thy hand ! 
Perfect the cup as planned! 
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same. 



It is an Infinite Purpose which is shaping man's 
destiny. He is in the hands of a Master Artist, 
who will perfect him in beauty after his own 



876 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

mind. Yet all such images are too crude for 
expressing the relations of the free spirit of man 
to the Infinite Life towards which he presses, 
that he may come more and more into sympathy 
with it. The world is given to man as an instru- 
ment of growth. He is free to use or to reject. 
He can climb the heights or he can descend to 
the abyss. The choice is his, and the destiny of 
his own making. If man loves the material good 
of the world, he is permitted to glut himself with 
it to the full. Should that not satisfy him, the spir- 
itual opens before him with its ever-enlarging joy 
and beauty. In his " Easter-Day " Browning has 
thoroughly developed this idea, and made answer 
to the question why it should be so hard for man 
to lead the Christ-like life. In " Ferishtah's Fan- 
cies" he returns to the same problem, and gives a 
new setting to every phase of his theory of man's 
being and destiny. Especially, in the latter 
poem, does he emphasize his belief that body and 
soul must be trained together. He is no ascetic, 
no scorner of the material conditions of life. 
Man is to gain the true end of his being by the 
use of the present to the full, not in selfishness 
and wantonness, but in a manly delight in every 
power and faculty he possesses. 



BROWNING. 377 

No, be man and nothing more — 
Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears. 
And craves and deprecates, and loves and loathes, 
And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes 
And show God granted most denying all. 

In " Rabbi Ben Ezra " he has expressly stated his 
conviction that, in the service of the present life, 
the body is to be regarded as of equal importance 
with the soul. 

Let us not always say, 

* Spite of this flesh to-day, 
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!' 

As the bird wings and sings. 

Let us cry, ' All good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now, than flesh helps soul ! ' 

Browning continually exults in the power and 
faculty which are man's, and in the eternal prom- 
ise which lies enfolded in his nature. He does 
not accept the limitations of man's being merely 
with a philosophical calm and a religious trust, 
for his attitude is that of confident anticipation. 
In them is to be found the more glorious promise 
for his destiny. He rejoices with all men who 
struggle and attain ; for them life has the deepest 
joy. In the struggle is the victory ; and how 
glorious it is to fight the way on, to meet obsta- 
cles and overcome them! Even more divine is it 



378 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

to be overcome in the conflict. The highest vic- 
tory comes only through defeat. Peace is won 
from out the cannon's mouth, and life from the 
jaws of death. The Christ lost all, that he might 
gain all. When the earth of material success had 
passed utterly away for him, then the heaven of 
true spiritual attainment became his forever. 

Man lives on earth because the earth-life is nec- 
essary to his development. There will come after 
it a more perfect result in proportion as we have 
warred with the hard conditions and overcome 
them. It is not smooth things man needs; but 
those which through trial will fit him for the 
higher destiny. Man advances through obstacles 
overcome : 

— for mankind springs 
Salvation by each hindrance interposed. 

We are to meet the hindrances face to face, as the 

soldier meets the enemy. So meeting them we 

are sure of victory. 

If I stoop 
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp 
Close to my heart ; its splendor soon or late 
Will pierce the gloom. 

This high conviction and assurance concerning 
the evil in human life grow out of his feeling 



BEOWXIXG. 379 

that there is an immortal life of ever-ascending 
attainment awaiting man in the future. That 
thought pervades all Browning's poetry ; and we 
can read but few pages of his without finding it 
repeated in some new form. Over all is God; 
and here is man struggling through the help of 
his imperfection to attain harmony w4th him, and 
sure to reach it. It is that grand hope and that 
profound faith which cause him to take a tone 
joyous and triumphant ever. He is no dogmatist, 
no blind assertor of opinions : for he is calm, and 
modest, and deferential ; but he goes forward as 
one who knows that life is for victory. The cap- 
tain has given orders ; he stops not to question 
why they have been given. His it is to obey ; 
and he does it without hesitation. In this spirit 
he accepts the great problems of life as having 
true and sure solutions in the heart that aspires. 
The heart has found God; and that is enough. 
The heart has also found the door of the future 
open; and now we stand in the outer court a 
little time to make ready our thoughts to enter in. 

Only grant a second life, I acquiesce 
In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst assault 
Triumpli, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more exalts 
Gain about to be. For at what moment did I so advance 
Near to knowledge as when frustrate of escape from ignorance ? 



880 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

Did not beauty prove most precious when its opposite obtained 
Rule, and truth seem more than ever potent because falsehood 

reigned? 
While for love — Oh how but, losmg love, does whoso love 

succeed 
By the death-pang to the birth-throe — learning what is love 

indeed? 
Only grant my soul may carry high through death her cup 

unspilled, 
Brimming though it be with knowledge, life's loss drop by drop 

distilled, 
I shall boast it mine — the balsam, bless each kindly wrench 

that wrung 
From life's tree its inmost virtue, tapped the root whence 

pleasure sprung, 
Barked the bole, and broke the bough, and bruised the berry, 

left all grace 
Ashes in death's stern alembic, loosed elixir in its place! 

Browning's faith may be stated in the words, 
God, soul, earth, heaven, hell, and evil overcome 
— as he has done it in "La Saisiaz." In more 
philosophical phrase, he teaches the absolute 
personality of God as the first principle, man as a 
finite image of God attaining harmony with him 
by a life of probation, the crowning of that 
probation by the triumph of immortal aspiration, 
love the means of man's growth, uncertainty 
also a necessary step of true attainment, good and 
evil the opposites by which man is helped to choose 
what is for his true growth, knowledge given 



BROWNING. 381 

through intuition, the spiritual mingled here with 
the eartlily and to be used with it, and God mani- 
fested through the human form of Christ. As 
thus reduced to the baldest statement, it would 
seem that Browning's faith embraced little more 
than the old interpretation of Christianity; but 
it contains much beside. He has stated the 
Christian faith in a manner of his own, which 
many will at once reject as not bearing the true 
mark. As the effort of a strong mind, a mind 
guided by philosophy and poetry alike, as well 
as by reason and love, his conclusions are of the 
greatest interest and importance. They bear to 
us the personal testimony of a keen mind dealing 
with the highest themes. It is a fresh and a vigor- 
ous word Browning gives us ; the word of a poet, 
and of one who looks at life with the artist's eye. 
It is through the heart and the imagination that 
he has sought to solve the problems of faith. 
And yet his pages contain very little of undiluted 
emotion or of imagination unchecked by phiin 
fact. A theist and a Christian, a mystic and 
a rationalist, a man of faith and a skeptic insistent 
on trutli — Browning is all these. His faitli is 
thoroughly subjective, and yet he has a passionate 
sympathy with the historic side of Christianity. 



382 POETS AND PEOBLEMS. 

In him we find a Kempis, Rousseau, and Kant 
reconciled, and reappearing in the thought of one 
man. 

God manifested in humanity is the cardinal 
thought of Browning's specially religious teach- 
ings ; and with that is linked the imperfection of 
man. These central beliefs, however, obtain at 
his hands a new and unique interpretation, which 
leaves for them in the end but a partial resem- 
blance to the old doctrines. Man is imperfect, 
and yet the imperfection is the very means of his 
development, which is to be worked out by an 
absolute obedience to the natural impulses of his 
own being. His own nature, however, is a centre 
of God's activity. God works by man and with 
him to perfect the finite with the life of the Infi- 
nite. 

Those who seek in the poet the artist only, will 
be discouraged by Browning, again and again. 
They will find little joy in his "La Saisiaz," 
" Ferishtah's Fancies," " A Death in the Desert," 
and many another of his poems. If an artist in 
these poems, he is an artist making use of the 
highest spiritual problems for their solution. He 
does not use them as a motif or a foil, but for the 
sake of throwing light on them. Looked at with 



BKOWNING. 383 

the eyes of the artist these are not great poems. 
They lack in the essentials of the truest poetic 
art. They have not enough of beauty ; and they 
cannot be the sources of perpetual joy. Looked 
at, however, as the poet's solution of the prob- 
lems which have ever plagued the minds of men, 
they must attract attention. The poet makes 
answer, not with faith or reason, tradition or his- 
toric evidence ; but with the heart and imagina- 
tion. Is that a testimony worthy of acceptance? 
The world has long neglected it; but it is one 
properly to be credited with the highest value. 
Without it, no right solution is to be reached. 
Divorced from imagination, reason is a false wit- 
ness. Faith alienated from love is no true guide 
for man. But, in so far as Browning has trusted 
to the heart and imagination as the only trust- 
worthy guides in religion, has he failed to con- 
vince us. The true solution can come only from 
a consensus of the testimony of all the faculties ; 
and this is to be had in no wise except by a long 
and patient effort. 

As a poet. Browning can afford us little plea- 
sure in his more thoughtful poems. These are for 
the persons who seek guidance on the way of life, 
and guidance satisfactory for thought. To these 



384 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

he comes with refreshment and a strong arm of 
support. His is a voice to lead, and a lamp to 
light the feet. He gives no promise of ease, or 
jDeace, or joy, to those who would seek counsel 
of him; but he gives courage, high aims, and a 
clear vision. His words are often like battle 
strokes ; and they ring forth with power and with 
sympathy. He is no captain who commands, but 
a friend who counsels. " It is so to me," is his 
only word. Others may go whither they will ; 
but he goes where the light has led him. 

In all the years of the present century, no one 
has sent forth into the w^orld Avords on the ques- 
tions of religion more needful, or more likely to 
help, than those of Robert Browning. That a few 
only will seek them out, cannot decrease their 
value or give them less power to affect the genu- 
ine course of human thought. They have the 
force of inspirations, making the ideal more real, 
and giving the heart a stronger hold on certain- 
ties. They fix the desires and purposes of life on 
the central things; and they help to gain the faith 
which is higher than sight. 



BROWNING. 385 

Browning is, and will always remain, the poet 
of the few. He has expressed in his poetry little 
of those qualities which win popularity. His 
thought does not take form along the common 
levels of opinion. The emotional life is not in- 
terpreted by him in a manner to bring him into 
sympathy with the great majority of mankind, 
even in cultivated circles. He makes too great a 
demand on thought, and he is too unconventional, 
to be received with favor by the mass of readers. 
Few will take the trouble to acquire the language 
which he has developed for expressing his poetical 
thoughts. It has been said that he wrote Greek 
in shorthand; and that will be the feeling of many 
who read him for the first time. The criticism 
is justly made ; and the result is that a love of 
Browning must be acquired. He needs the com- 
mentary which has been provided for his works 
by one of his disciples. Even that is not a per- 
fect key for unlocking the treasures which are 
contained in his volumes. No commentary has 
yet made "Sordello" other than a stumbling- 
block for even the most zealous of the poet's 
admirers. Other poems are not less blind and 
perplexing, and needing to be made capable of 
mental absorption by some process of dilution. 



386 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

Those who once come into sympathy with 
Browning, become his enthusiastic admirers and 
disciples. The reading of his poetry becomes a 
cultus, and admiration for it the sign of a spirit- 
ual brotherhood. He is studied with enthusiasm, 
and his teachings are accepted with the ardors of 
conviction. Something there must be in a poet 
who can command such zeal and devotion. What 
is the secret of his peculiar power, and what the 
nature of that unique fascination which he exer- 
cises? They must be very great to overcome the 
real difficulties presented in his poetry. 

Something of the charm Browning has for his 
special admirers is to be found in the very fact 
that he is a perplexity to the majority of man- 
kind. They love him because he is exclusive and 
unique. He does not belong to everybody ; and 
those who admire him form an aristocracy of their 
own. There are intellectual epicures, who are not 
willing to digest that which is given to every one. 
They wish for something that is a rarity, and 
which can only be had with much difficulty. 
Others there are who do not care for the exclu- 
siveness of the poet, but who delight in contend- 
ing with verbal and philosophical difficulties. 
The harder the nut, the greater the zeal with 



BROWNING. 387 

which they undertake to crack it. They have an 
insatiable literary curiosity, and cannot take an 
interest in the poet who does not try the patience 
and rack the ingenuity of the reader. 

It would be a grave injustice done to Browning 
to suppose that these two classes embrace all his 
admirers. What is most zealous and exclusive in 
their admiration has its origin in these causes. A 
more substantial basis for the love of his poetry is 
to be found in his spiritual interpretation of man 
and the world. In all ages there are transcenden- 
talists ; but in a time of positivism they are drawn 
together around the man of intuition and faith 
with a fresh zeal. Whoever asserts the worth of 
the soul with a supreme conviction, will not be 
wanting in disciples. As no other has done dur- 
ing the last quarter of a century, Browning has 
asserted the eternal reality of the soul as the most 
vital truth which can come within the ken of 
man. The emphasis he has laid on that truth 
has been in itself quite enough to win him all the 
disciples he has gained. The man of positive 
thought on any subject of supreme moment to 
the intellectual understanding of existence can- 
not fail to attract those who will find in him a 
leader and a master. 



388 POETS AND PROBLEMS. 

More than all else is Browning an interpreter 
of human nature. Here is the real secret of his 
power. He has a wonderful insight into human 
character, and a marvellous facility for its interpre- 
tation. He not only creates characters, but he 
unfolds and makes them manifest. Human nature 
has no secrets from him. His power of analysis 
is of the most subtle kind, and reaches to the in- 
most impulses of the human being. The measure 
of his analytic power is the measure of his sym- 
pathy, for his sympathy is the guiding motive in 
his analysis. Humanity is the highest attraction 
he knows ; and his love for man is of the loftiest 
and widest kind. He knows because he loves. 
He loves because the object is worthy of his affec- 
tion. Love and faith are the instruments of his 
analysis. There is warrant enough, therefore, for 
the admiration his work has received, and basis 
there is, too, for whatever study may be given to 
it. The very effort he has made to analyze the 
nature of man shows the greatness of his aim. 
Man is the highest theme of the poet's art, and 
its very greatness may obscure the result of his 
creative effort. 



INDEX. 



Arnold, Matthew, 25. 
Art, 45, 49, 63, 150, 173, 176, 
182, 226, 233, 239, 303, 310. 
Arthur, King, 72, 121. 

Beauty, 51, 98, 149. 

Burns, 38. 

Browning, Robert : his father, 
279 ; early verses, 279 ; in- 
fluence of Shelley, 280; 
first poem, 280; "Paracel- 
sus," 281; "Bells and 
Pomegranates," 282; mar- 
riage, 282 ; personal traits, 
284; Bayard Taylor's de- 
scription of, 284 ; Haw- 
thorne's, 284 ; Harriet Mar- 
tineau's, 285 ; Landor's, 28G ; 
Domett's 287; personality 
of, 288 ; relations to his wife, 
289 ; Elizabeth Barrett, 291 ; 
wedding, 293; in Italy, 295 ; 
influence of marriage, 299 ; 
tributes to wife, 298. 

Browning as a thinker, 303; 
theory of art, 304 ; theory 
of nature, 307; theory of 



life, 308; music, 312; per- 
sonality, 313; character- 
istics as a poet, 316 ; style, 
318; Gothic spirit, 323; 
learning, 327 ; dramatic 
method, 329; dramas, 330; 
development of soul, 336; 
poet of psychology, 337 ; 
his own teachings, 343 ; 
poetic qualities, 345; love 
of man, 346 ; analytic spirit, 
347 ; philosophic attitude, 
349 ; the individual, 351 ; 
God, 352 ; attitude of doubt, 
355 ; his faith, 356 ; an ideal- 
ist, 357 ; a Christian, 359 ; 
Christ, 359 ; revelation, 365*1 
human nature, 367 ; intui- 
tion, 368; insight, 369; 
promise of man's nature,. 
377; probation, 378; relig- 
ious aspiration, 380; sum- 
mary, 385. 

Browning, 10, 13, 37, 181, 264, 
273. 

Browning, Mrs., 39, 133, 282, 
290. 



390 



INDEX. 



Byron, 47. 

Cambridge, 73. 

Carlyle, 79, 82, 85, 89, 205, 

262, 273, 308. 
Chaucer, 62, 72. 
Christianity, 176, 264, 311, 359. 
Coleridge, 25, 36, 62. 
Conventionalism, 228. 
Critic, the, 11, 210, 221, 305. 
Criticism, 15, 208, 215, 225. 

Dante, 153, 324. 
Dryden, 58, 99. 

Elizabeth, age of, 57. 

Faith, 164, 260, 382. 
Feeling, 20, 130, 199, 243. 
Fox, Caroline, 80, 84. 
Freedom, 58. 
Freshwater, 82. 

God, 157, 203, 240, 259, 303, 

351. 
Goethe, 64, 203. 
Gothic spirit, 179, 218, 323. 
Greek thought, 61,89, 174, 203. 

Hallam, Arthur, 78, 113. 
Hegel, 349. 
Howitt, Wm., 79. 

Idealism, 57, 155, 174, 271,349. 
"Idyls of the King," 105, 121, 

139. 
Imagination, 25, 37, 43, 66, 197, 

201. 



Imitation in poetry, 43. 
Immortality, 116, 158, 379. 
"In Memoriam," 78, 112. 

Keats, 47, 61, 89, 180, 280. 

Landor, 61, 80. 
Longfellow, 88. 
Louth, 73. 

Man, 68, 173, 231, 353, 367, 

378. 
"Maud,'" 92, 106. 
Maurice, 74, 203. 
Melody in verse, 89, 91. 
"Modern Painters," 191, 198. 
Morals, 46, 144, 233. 
Morris, Wm., 181. 

Naturalism, 175. 

Nature, 69, 180, 187, 202, 307. 

Newman, Cardinal, 74- 

Oxford movement, 60, 102, 176, 
216. 

Past, the, 61. 

Plagiarism, 95. 

Poet, the, 20, 33, 37, 45, 60, 

53, 65, 68, 131, 145, 322, 

366. 
Poetry, 12, 19, 23, 25, 30, 35, 

37, 39, 44. 
Political economy, 243. 
Pope, 39, 58. 

Pre-Raphaelites, 177, 21u. 
" Princess, the," 110. 
Progress, 61, 103, 123, 154. 



INDEX. 



391 



Realism, 64, 155, 206, 230, 238. 

Revolution, 66, 217. 

Revolution, French, 57, 174. 

Rhyme, 37. 

Rousseau, 202, 229. 

Ruskin, John : influence of 
father, 185 ; love of nature, 
185; childhood, 186; early 
love of art, 187; influence 
of mother, 188 ; poetry, 189 ; 
at Oxford, 190; "Modern 
Painters," 191 ; as an author, 
192; personal traits, 192; 
described by Crabbe Robin- 
son, 193 ; Miss Mitford, 193 ; 
Sydney Dobell, 193; habits, 
194. 

Ruskin : art influence, 183 ; as 
a prose writer, 196 ; elo- 
quence, 197 ; imagination, 
197; poetry, 198; inter- 
preter of life, 199; genius, 
200; love of nature, 201; 
like Rousseau, 202; Greek 
spirit, 203 ; studies of na- 
ture, 204 ; nature as God's 
habitation, 205 ; like Words- 
worth, 207 ; as a critic, 208 ; 
theory of life, 209 ; breadth 
of thought, 212 ; science, 
216 ; sympathy with Oxford 
movement, 217 ; criticism 
not sound, 219; defects in 
teaching, 223 ; art critic, 
226; nature of art, 227; 
conventionalism in art, 228 ; 
truthfulness, 230: love of 



man, 231 ; moral teaching, 
233; realism, 237; higher 
worth of art, 240 ; sympa- 
thies with humanity, 243; 
political economy, 243 ; St. 
George's Guild, 247 ; " strong 
man," 249; paternalism in 
government, 250 ; religious 
teachings, 257; a Christian, 
259 ; critic of religion, 261 ; 
faith in God, 264; summary, 
266. 
Ruskin, 10, 13, 36, 183, 185, 
305. 

Satire, 109.. 

Science in relation to poetry, 

22, 26, 28, 36, 64, 69, 216. 
Scott, 57, 59. 

Sentiment, 118, 130, 243, 248. 
Shakspere, 49, 52, 334. 
Shelley, 57, 203, 280, 289. 
Spenser, 52. 
Swinburne, 39, 181. 

Tennyson, Alfred : ancestry, 
71 ; father, 71 ; brothers, 

72 ; early poetry, 72 ; school 
at Louth, 72; poet is influ- 
enced by, 72 ; first poems, 

73 ; at Cambridge, 73 ; col- 
lege friends, 74 ; Whewell, 
tutor, 74 ; second volume of 
poems, 75 ; Fanny Kemble's 
description, 76 ; Fitzgerald's, 
76; "Poems" published, 
77; leaves Cambridge, 77,- 



392 



INDEX. 



Arthur Hallam, 78 ; moves 
to London, 78 ; wanderings, 
79 ; Howitt's description, 79 ; 
Landor's,80 ; Caroline Fox's, 
80; "Poems" in two vol- 
umes, 81 ; Poet Laureate, 
82 ; at Freshwater, 82 ; per- 
sonal habits, 83 ; Conway's 
description, 84 ; Caroline 
Fox again, 84; Carlyle's, 
85 ; ch9,racter, 86. 
Tennyson : rank as a poet, 88 ; 
love of melody and music, 
89; an artist in words, 90; 
habit of revision, 92 ; accu- 
racy in details, 93 ; his 
knowledge, 93 ; wholly a 
poet, 94 ; plagiarisms, 95 ; 
letter quoted, 96 ; love of 
beauty, 98 ; dilettante in 
spirit, 100; liberalism, 102; 
love of man, 105 ; "Maud," 
106; satire, 109; "The 
Princess," 110; "InMemo- 
riam," 112; "Idyls of the 
King," 121; lyrical and 
idyllic poetry, 127; the poet 
of English life, 128; worth 
of sentiment, 130 ; sympathy 



with the past, 132 ; poems 
of love, 133 ; patriotic 
poetry, 134; chief char- 
acteristic, 13G ; dramatic 
poetry, 138; views of art, 
144; moral aim in poetry, 
145 ; nature of true art, 150 ; 
artistic traits, 150; an ideal- 
ist, 153; progress, 154; 
faith in God, 156 ; belief in 
immortality, 159 ; religious 
ideas, 161 ; a broad church- 
man, 164; "we have but 
faith," 164; sympathy with 
his time, 169; summary, 
169. 

Tennyson, 10, 13, 39, 52, 70, 
181, 263. 

Tennyson, Charles, 73, 76. 

Transcendentalism, 60, 349. 

Turner, 175, 180, 191, 203, 220. 

Victorian era, 62, 67, 70, 173. 

Whitman, 39. 

Wordsworth, 26, 29, 38, 47, 52, 

57, 60, 63, 99, 103, 175, 180, 

203, 241. 
World-poets, 37, 46. 



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